LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
"MADE IN GERMANY 
 
"MADE IN GERMANY" 
 
 LORD ROSEBERY (at Colchester) : " Germany has long 
 been 20, 30, or 40 years ahead of us in technical education. 
 I am afraid of Germany. Why am I afraid of the Germans? 
 Because I admire and esteem them so much. They are an 
 industrious nation ; they are, above all, a systematic nation 
 they are a scientific nation, and whatever they take up, whethe/ 
 it be the arts of peace or the arts of war, they push them 
 forward to the utmost possible perfection with that industry, 
 that system, that science which is part of their character. Are 
 we gaining on the Germans ? I believe, on the contrary, we 
 are losing ground. The other day one of the greatest authorities 
 on this subject went to Germany, being stirred up by what he 
 had seen of alarm in the newspapers on the subject. He came 
 back and told a friend of mine that he was absolutely appalled 
 by the progress made in the last twenty years by the Germans 
 in technical and commercial education as compared with what 
 was going on in England." 
 
 LORD ROSEBERY (on Technical Education) :" A little 
 book has been lately published called ' Made in Germany,' which 
 I do think is well worth the attention of everybody who is 
 interested in the prosperity of the country, of which his 
 prosperity is a part." 
 
 The Times : " Mr. Williams draws a gloomy picture of the 
 growing rivalry of German with English trade, and his exhor- 
 tations to the British trader are salutary." 
 
 St. James's Gazette : " His book is a little one, but it is 
 better worth studying than many treatises ten times its bulk. . . . 
 One for all Englishmen to read and to think over; it is uncom- 
 monly salutary." 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette : " A careful and particular inquiry, 
 drawn from the best official information available, into the en- 
 croachments of German competition upon British trade." 
 
 Saturday Review : " Deserves all the public attention 
 which it has received. The facts are of the highest importance 
 to the nation. . . . Sensible advice is administered to the 
 British manufacturer with rare tact." 
 
 Commerce :" One of the most opportune and important 
 commercial works ever written." 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN. 
 
" MADE IN GERMANY " 
 
 BY 
 
 ERNEST EDWIN WILLIAMS 
 
 fifth 
 
 Bfcttion 
 
 LONDON 
 WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 1897 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
* 
 
 V\ 
 
 First Edition, June, 1896, 
 Second Edition, July, 1896. 
 Third Edition, August, 1896. 
 Fourth Edition, October, 1896, 
 Fifth Edition, January, 1897. 
 
 GENERAL 
 
>ebfcateb 
 
 TO THE 
 
 MANUFACTURERS AND MERCHANTS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNITED KINGDOM 
 
 108221 
 
NOTE TO FOURTH EDITION 
 
 I have been taken to task by some of my critics because 
 my dates are not all in unison. I submit that the reproach 
 is undeserved. To have taken one set of years for all my 
 illustrations would not have conduced to lucidity : in many 
 cases it would have given an entirely false view of the 
 matter. Where I wished to show the height from which 
 certain industries have fallen, it would have been foolishly 
 incorrect to mention any other than the top year ; yet in 
 the case of a group of allied industries I have, for 
 uniformity's sake, adopted one year throughout, though 
 in so doing I weakened the force of the illustration. 
 Again, the zenith of different industries is recorded in 
 different years, and they have to be treated according to 
 their periods of decline and fall : to bring ancient and 
 modern into a uniform line of dates would be the reduction 
 to the absurd of the statistical method. The same remark 
 applies to the different countries in their different stages 
 of development. But when making comparisons between 
 the respective trades in Germany and England I have 
 been careful, whenever practicable, to adhere to the 
 same periods. 
 
 E. E. W. 
 
 October, 1896. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Six out of the eight chapters of this book (brought up 
 to date and extended) have already appeared in the Nevi 
 Review : the importance of the subject is my apology for 
 republication. They are, also, necessary as introduction 
 to the final chapters wherein is set forth the conclusion of 
 the matter. 
 
 During the progress of the serial portion of the work I 
 have been taken to task by various kinds of critics, and 
 have been called various names of a more or less uncom- 
 plimentary tendency. That was to be expected. The gift 
 of my god-parents has been supplemented by the classic 
 alias of Cassandra ; my terms have been described as 
 alarmist, my general statements as exaggerated, my con- 
 clusions as false. But my facts have for the most part 
 been left alone. 
 
 My book sees the light at a somewhat inauspicious 
 moment. We are rejoicing over one of those spurts of 
 good trade which gladden the hearts of manufacturers and 
 bring perplexity to the brows of economists ; and I have 
 to play the thankless part of Skeleton at the Commercial 
 Feast. But my message, I venture to think, will be none 
 the less useful for that. Journalists have been writing 
 as though the cuiTent revival were a blessing vouchsafed 
 by Providence to England in paiticular. As a matter of 
 
x PREFACE 
 
 fact England's relative share has been much less than 
 Germany's : so that during this good time her most for- 
 midable rival has been gaining on her. And the good 
 time isn't going to last. For the barometer is already 
 showing a disposition to fall. 
 
 In the two last chapters I have discussed Fair and Free 
 Trade, and I have touched on the matter in what may be 
 deemed a tentative the ardent Protectionist may call it a 
 half-hearted fashion. This cursory treatment must not 
 be taken as a reflection of my views on the subject : it is 
 rather the result of an anxiety to give prominence to other 
 matters which (in the aggregate, if not individually) are of 
 not less importance than a right adjustment of our fiscal 
 relations. 
 
 My book has been troublesome to compile ; it has 
 also been troublesome to others. Casting back my mind 
 across the last year I feel something very like alarm as I 
 tell over the number of busy people whom I have worried. 
 My first thanks to Mr. W. E. Henley, the editor of the 
 New Review. Among other names which occur to me are 
 those of Mr. T. J. Pittar, the statistician of Her Majesty's 
 Customs, Mr. A. C. Meyjes, editor of The Chemist and 
 Druggist, Mr. John Horner of Belfast, Mr. Herbert Hughes, 
 the Secretary of the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce, Mr. 
 Frederick Hooper, the Secretary of the Bradford Chamber, 
 Mr. Andrew McDonald of Glasgow, and many others, to 
 all of whom I tender sincere thanks and apologies. 
 
 E. E. W. 
 
 SUDBUllY, HAEHOW, 
 
 June, 1896. 
 
PAGE 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. The Departing Glory * 
 
 \J II. Iron and Steel 23 
 
 III. Ships, Hardware, and Machines 46 
 
 IT. Textiles 68 
 
 V. Chemicals 90 
 
 YJ. The Lesser Trades HO 
 
 VII. Why Germany Beats Ub 130 
 
 VIII. What We Must Do to be Saved 164 
 
MADE IN GEKMANY 
 
 THE DEPARTING GLORY 
 
 The Industrial Supremacy of Great Britain has been 
 long an axiomatic commonplace ; and it is fast turning into 
 a myth, as inappropriate to fact as the Chinese Emperor's 
 computation of his own status. This is a strong statement. 
 But it is neither wide nor short of the truth. The indus- 
 trial glory of England is departing, and England does not 
 know it. There are spasmodic outcries against foreign 
 competition, but the impression they leave is fleeting and 
 vague. The phrase, " Made in Germany," is raw material 
 for a jape at the pantomime, or is made the text for a 
 homily by the official guardians of some particular trade, in 
 so far as the matter concerns themselves. British Consuls, 
 too, send words of warning home, and the number of these 
 is increasing with significant frequency. But the nation at 
 large is yet as little alive to the impending danger as to the 
 evil already wrought. The man in the shop or the factory 
 has plenty to say about the Armenian Question and the 
 House of Lords, but about commercial and industrial matters 
 
 B 
 
2 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 which concern him vitally he is generally much less eloquent. 
 The amount of interest evinced by the amateur politician 
 seems invariably to advance with the remoteness of the 
 matter from his daily bread. It is time to disturb the fatal 
 torpor : even though the moment be, in one sense, unhappily 
 chosen. The pendulum between depression and prosperity 
 has swung to the latter, and manufacturers and merchants 
 are flushed with the joyful contemplation of their order- 
 books. Slackness has given way to briskness ; the lean 
 years have been succeeded by a term of fat ones. The 
 prophet of evil commands his most attentive audiences when 
 the times are with him. When they are good though the 
 good be fleeting his words are apt to fall unheeded. 
 
 Economists at Sea 
 
 The peril is not made any the less imminent by the 
 flatteries with which certain political economists are wont 
 to delude the England whose industrial interests it is their 
 duty to safeguard. The late Professor Thorold Rogers, for 
 example, suffered acutely from this failing. Like most of 
 us, he was a worshipper at the shrine of Free Trade, but 
 he sometimes served his goddess all too well. In his 
 Oxford University lecture, Home Trade and International 
 Competition, 1 we are told, by way of introduction, that 
 home producers have a great natural advantage over 
 foreigners in the matter of the cost of freight. Such a 
 statement inspires no confidence in what is to follow ; for 
 it is a matter of the commonest knowledge as it should 
 have been of professorial knowledge even in '89 that 
 foreign goods are delivered in the London market at a 
 lower charge than home produce which has not travelled a 
 tenth of the distance. We are thus almost prepared 
 for such apiece of information as this : " I hear of Belgian 
 
 1 Published posthumously in his Industrial and Commercial History 
 of England. 
 
ECONOMISTS AT SEA 3 
 
 and German iron being imported into England, but I do 
 not find the entries even in the expanded returns of imports 
 by the Board of Trade." l This is surely a case for the 
 oculist. There are two columns and a half of these imports 
 in the Annual Returns ; and the figures might, one would 
 have thought, alarm even an Oxford economist. Later, the 
 Professor, in his aggravating omniscience, dismisses all 
 German-made goods as worthless : because some bayonets 
 which the English Government once bought turned out to 
 be of inferior steel ! His airy disdain is a trifle misplaced. 
 As matter of fact, many German manufactures, notably 
 those in which artistic finish is needed, are undeniably 
 superior to those produced by British houses. It is very 
 dangerous for men to ignore facts that they may the better 
 vaunt their theories. Because England is a Free-Trade 
 country and Germany is not, therefore, says the fanatical 
 Free-Trader, England's trade must of necessity advance 
 while her rival stands still ; and to prove his case, facts 
 straightway are either to be perverted or to be denied. 
 This is poor patriotism. It is poor service, too, to Free 
 Trade ; there is no cause so good that it cannot be weakened 
 by suppressions of the truth. The Free-Trader must not 
 shrink from looking the facts of foreign competition squarely 
 in the face ; and if he search for their origin he will find 
 other causes besides a protective tariff. 
 
 From Thorold Rogers to Sir Robert Giffen is a natural 
 transition ; for the Professor bequeathed Sir Robert as a 
 guide and a comforter to all students of political economy. 
 Comforting, assuredly, Sir Robert is being convinced that 
 English trade is in a most flourishing condition ; and he 
 has been at great pains to induce other people to share his 
 illusion. His reasons for joyfulness, as set forth in his 
 Essays in Finance, are not, however, of a character to 
 bring solace to the ordinary mind. He affirms, and he 
 reiterates, with a great parade of argument, that the 
 
 1 Industrial and Commercial History of England, p. 391, 
 
 B 2 
 
4 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 increase of foreign manufactures is not only non-injurious 
 to British trade, but is actually a help to it ! To read is 
 to wonder if there is anything Free-Traders will not say in 
 defence of their darling doctrine. But a writer of the 
 position and influence of Sir Robert Giffen cannot be 
 shrugged out of court ; and though I have not space to 
 analyse his contentions in detail, I must allude at least to 
 certain statements of his in support of his amazing thesis. 
 The curious will find them condensed in his chapter on 
 " Foreign Manufactures and English Trade " in the second 
 series of his Essays in Finance. He also is a Free-Trader 
 of the type which declines to admit the possibility that any- 
 thing is rotten in commercial England, for the simple 
 reason that England is a Free-Trade country, and there- 
 fore cannot go wrong. Let us test a link or two in the 
 chain of his argument. 
 
 " The very increase of population," he says, " is a proof 
 
 of prosperity In about eighty years the population 
 
 has trebled." l The first sentence may be accepted as 
 generally true, and it gives point to the second. Now, in 
 the earlier of those eighty years England was not suffering 
 from foreign competition, and it was just then that her 
 biggest increase was in progress. At the present time the 
 rate of increase is declining, and foreign competition is 
 getting yearly more and more acute. The obvious corollary 
 does not seem to help Sir Robert much. Again, speaking 
 of the annihilation of an English industry, when foreigners 
 take to manufacturing for themselves an article hitherto 
 supplied by England, Sir Robert makes light of the loss to 
 her of " the original direct demand," and for this says that 
 " at the worst there would only be a displacement of 
 manufacture not a matter to be much considered." 2 But 
 a displacement of manufacture is commonly a matter which 
 does demand consideration, and a great deal of it. It is a 
 mere chance if the workers " displaced " can find equally 
 
 1 Essays in Finance, Second Series p. 24. 
 
 2 Essays in Finance , p. 244. 
 
ECONOMISTS AT SEA ft 
 
 profitable employment in another direction ; and the 
 chances are against them. In the usual event there is an 
 addition to the ranks of the Unemployed, with a fresh 
 crowding of the Unskilled Labour market ; to say nothing 
 of much waste of capital and the ills attendant thereon. 
 The most of the population and the capital " displaced " 
 eventually settle down into other industrial grooves ; but 
 prosperity is not thereby enhanced, and the old level is not 
 likely to be reached much less maintained. For example, 
 a community of " displaced " steel-workers which should 
 take to match-making, would not find the change a particu- 
 larly healthy one, and something of the kind is far more 
 likely to be the result of a " displacement " than the birth 
 and development of a new and equally profitable industry. 
 Again, you are told that " no old country has progressed in 
 a similar manner " to England. 1 But England's marvellous 
 progress is an event of past, not (as Sir Robert Giifen 
 would have you believe) of current, history. In all our 
 industries you find a steady slowing-down : it is Germany 
 which is in for the " marvellous progress " now. England 
 made hers when and because she had command of the 
 world's markets. 
 
 Finally, Sir Robert Giffen commits himself to the asser- 
 tion that " in no country in the world has the foreign 
 trade progressed so much" as in England; and, again, his 
 reference is to the present. The short answer to this is to 
 be found in certain official figures. Recent years have 
 witnessed a world-wide depression in trade, and the exports 
 of every country have gone down ; but, whereas the exports 
 of the United Kingdom declined 6 per cent, between '92 
 and '94, those of Germany went back but three, while in 
 amount England's loss was four times greater than 
 Germany's. It is fair to add that Sir Robert Giffen' s book 
 was published in '86, since when the tide of things has set 
 steadily against his inferences. 
 
 1 Essays in Finance, p. 250. 
 
MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 Wlmt Authorities Think 
 
 Others take a saner, if a less cheerful, view of the situa- 
 tion than Sir Robert Giffen. They are men, too, whose 
 opinions are not less entitled to respect than those of 
 doctrinaire economists. I have already referred to the 
 warnings which are being sent to us from our Continental 
 Consulates. One or two extracts will be not amiss, ex- 
 ampling (as they do) the normal tenor of the Foreign Office 
 Reports. Thus says Sir Charles Oppenheimer, in a Report 
 dated 31st July, 1894, on the commercial relations of 
 Germany with foreign countries * 
 
 The turn of mind altogether in Germany, which has come 
 about with the growth of the commercial treaty policy, leads one to 
 expect that the endeavours of the German industry to open up new 
 fields for output in the world's market (which endeavours, too, are 
 seconded by the Government), will in future be carried on with still 
 greater zeal. The enthusiasm of the German industrial party at the 
 conclusion of the Russo-German Commercial Treaty, which was quite 
 inconsistent with the sober dry customs policy, may perhaps likewise 
 be regarded as an expression of the increased feeling awakened within 
 them of the need of expansion. It will be the task of the great 
 industries of England, with a view to her extended commerce and her 
 predominant position on the seas, to draw the lesson for her own 
 mode of proceeding from the increased zeal and the facilitated 
 condition of labour in the German industry .... 
 
 As the rise of national industries in primitive countries, so 
 likewise must be noted the increasing rivalry of Germany and other 
 countries as exporters of industrial products. Germany, whose 
 export from the very first had to reckon with the rise of national 
 industries, and found, to a great extent, the markets filled with 
 English goods, has introduced new tactics and artifices in her export, 
 the success of which is an established fact, and which will also have 
 to be adopted by the older English export houses if English industry 
 is to compete on equal footing in foreign countries with their German 
 rivals. 
 
 Thus, too, Mr. Martin Gosselin, writing from Berlin on 
 
 German Colonisation 2 
 
 I have endeavoured in the above report to give a summary, and, 
 I fear, imperfect sketch of the progress made and the results attained 
 by Germany in the development of her Colonial Empire during the 
 
 1 Foreign Office, 1894, Miscellaneous Series, No. 340. 
 
 2 Foreign Office, 1894, Miscellaneous Series, No. 346. 
 
AS IT WAS 7 
 
 first ten years of its existence, a picture which must arrest the 
 attention of the most careless observer, as showing what can be done 
 by indomitable perseverance and patience with materials and in 
 regions not always of the most promising description .... Between 
 the Fatherland and the transmarine possessions lines of steamers are 
 being established and developed, which, besides the transport of 
 colonists and cargoes, have already made German influence felt in 
 places where but a few years ago Germany was almost an unknown 
 quantity. Telegraph and postal services are being organised and 
 improved ; German goods, German commercial travellers, and German 
 inventions are now to be found all over the universe ; her postal 
 steamers visit Asia, Africa, America, and Australasia, her commercial 
 marine is steadily increasing in number of ships and tonnage. 
 
 Here is another pregnant excerpt: it is from Mr. 
 Rennell Rodd's report on trade in Egypt, dated February, 
 1896 l 
 
 Mr. Rodd speaks of a case where a travelling representative 
 approached the German manager of a local firm which had recently 
 obtained a large contract to execute, he was told that all orders were 
 to be placed in Germany, and that no English need apply. Such 
 instances, which might easily be multiplied, indicate how necessary it 
 is for Englishmen to enter by all available means into direct communi- 
 cation with the consumer, who is indifferent to the nationality of his 
 furnisher. 
 
 As It Was 
 
 There was a time when our industrial Empire was un- 
 challenged. It was England which first emerged from the 
 Small-Industry stage. She produced the Industrial Revolu- 
 tion about the middle of the last century, and well-nigh 
 until the middle of this she developed her multitude of 
 mills, and factories, and mines, and warehouses, undis- 
 turbed by war at home, and profiting by wars abroad. The 
 great struggles which drained the energies of the Conti- 
 nental nations, sealed her industrial supremacy, and made 
 her absolute mistress of the world-market. Thanks to 
 them, she became the Universal Provider. English 
 machinery, English pottery, English hardware, guns, and 
 cutlery, English rails and bridge-work, English manu- 
 factures of well-nigh every kind formed the material of 
 civilisation all over the globe. She covered the dry land 
 1 Foreign Office, 1896, Miscellaneous Series, No. 391. 
 
8 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 with a network of railways, and the seas were alive with 
 her own ships freighted with her own merchandise. Be- 
 tween 1793 and 1815 the value of her exports had risen 
 from 17,000,000 to 58,000,000. Her industrial do- 
 minion was immense, unquestioned, unprecedented in the 
 history of the human race ; and not unnaturally we have 
 come to regard her rule as eternal. But careless self-con- 
 fidence makes not for Empire. "While she was throwing 
 wide her gates to the world at large, her sisters were build- 
 ing barriers of protection against her j and, behind those 
 barriers, and aided often by State subventions, during the 
 middle and later years of the century, they have developed 
 industries of their own. Of course, this was to a certain 
 extent inevitable. England could not hope for an eternal 
 monopoly of the world's manufactures ; and industrial 
 growths abroad do not of necessity sound the knell of her 
 greatness. But she must discriminate in her equanimity. 
 
 v And most certainly she must discriminate against Germany. 
 For Germany has entered into a deliberate and deadly 
 
 t rivalry with her, and is battling with might and main for 
 the extinction of her supremacy. 
 
 In estimating England's industrial position, regard must 
 
 *also be had to her function as the world's middleman. Not 
 only is she a manufacturer for other peoples : she is like- 
 wise their agent for distribution. There is scarce a nation 
 certainly not one of any importance which does not 
 come to England to buy goods sent in for sale from else- 
 where. She sells those nations hams from her Colonies, 
 coffee from Arabia, gloves from France, currants from 
 Greece, cotton from America in fact it would bo hard to 
 name an article produced abroad which is not on sale 
 in those universal market-places, the Mersey and the 
 Thames. In this retail business, also, the Germans are 
 setting themselves to beat us ; and South Americans are 
 already buying their Irish linen through Hamburg houses. 
 If there be an advance in this form of competition on the 
 
THE GERMAN REVOLUTION 9 
 
 part of Germany, we shall lose the little benefit accruing 
 from the German export trade ; for in all other respects it 
 is wholly baneful to us. 
 
 The German Revolution 
 
 Up to a couple of decades ago, Germany was an agri- 
 cultural State. Her manufactures were few and unim- 
 portant ; her industrial capital was small ; her export 
 trade was too insignificant to merit the attention of the 
 official statistician ; she imported largely for her own con- 
 sumption. Now she has changed all that. Her youth has 
 crowded into English houses, has wormed its way into 
 English manufacturing secrets, and has enriched her 
 establishments with the knowledge thus purloined. She 
 has educated her people in a fashion which has made 
 it in some branches of industry the superior, and in most 
 the equal of the English. Her capitalists have been 
 content with a simple style, which has enabled them to 
 dispense with big immediate profits, and to feed their 
 capital. 1 They have toiled at their desks, and made their 
 sons do likewise ; they have kept a strict controlling hand 
 on all the strings of their businesses ; they have obtained 
 State aid in several ways as special rates to shipping * 
 ports; they have insinuated themselves into every part 
 of the world civilised, barbarian, savage learning the 
 languages, and patiently studying the wants and tastes 
 of the several peoples. Not content with reaping the 
 advantages of British colonisation this was accomplished 
 with alarming facility Germany has "protected" the 
 simple savage on her own account, and the Imperial 
 Eagle now floats on the breezes of the South Sea Islands, 
 and droops in the thick air of the African littoral. 
 
 1 For example, one Rhenish ironworks makes it a rule, whatever its 
 profits, not to pay a higher dividend than 5 per cent. The rest goes 
 into a reserve fund, and a fund for the purchase of fresh and improved 
 plant and machinery. 
 
10 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 Her diplomatists have negotiated innumerable commercial 
 treaties. The population of her cities has been increasing 
 in a manner not unworthy of England in the Thirties and 
 Forties. Like England, too, she is draining her rural 
 districts for the massing of her children in huge factory- 
 towns. Her yards (as well as those of England) too, 
 are ringing with the sound of hammers upon ships being 
 builded for the transport of German merchandise. Her 
 agents and travellers swarm through Russia, and wherever 
 else there is a chance of trade on any terms are even 
 
 a supplying the foreigner with German goods at a loss, that 
 they may achieve their purpose in the end. In a word, 
 an industrial development, unparalleled, save in England a 
 century ago, is now her portion. A gigantic commercial 
 
 % State is arising to menace our prosperity, and contend 
 with us for the trade of the world. It is true that this 
 mad rush towards industrialism does not meet with universal 
 approval ; and the Agrarian Party is energetic in its 
 denunciation of the ruin wrought thereby to Germany 
 as an agricultural State. But its protests have nothing 
 availed it yet, nor are ever likely to avail it anything. 
 
 Made in Germany 
 The phrase is fluent in the mouth : how universally ap- 
 propriate it is, probably no one who has not made a special 
 study of the matter is aware. Take observations, Gentle 
 Reader, in your own surroundings : the mental exercise is 
 recommended as an antidote to that form of self-sufficiency 
 which our candid friends regard as indigenous to the British 
 climate. Your investigations will work out somewhat in 
 this fashion. You will find that the material of some of 
 your own clothes was probably woven in Germany. Still 
 more probable is it that some of your wife's garments are 
 German importations ; while it is practically beyond a 
 doubt that the magnificent mantles and jackets wherein 
 her maids array themselves on their Sundays out are 
 
MADE IN GERMANY 11 
 
 German-made and German-sold, for only so could they 
 be done at the figure. Your governess's fiance is a clerk 
 in the City; but he also was made in Germany. The 
 toys, and the dolls, and the fairy books which your chil- 
 dren maltreat in the nursery are made in Germany : nay, 
 the material of your favourite (patriotic) newspaper had 
 the same birthplace as like as not. Roam the house over, 
 and the fateful mark will greet you at every turn, 
 from the piano in your drawing-room to the mug on your 
 kitchen dresser, blazoned though it be with the legend, A 
 Present from Margate. Descend to your domestic depths, 
 and you shall find your very drain-pipes German made. 
 You pick out of the grate the paper wrappings from a book 
 consignment, and they also are " Made in Germany." You 
 stuff: them into the fire, and reflect that the poker in your 
 hand was forged in Germany. As you rise from your 
 hearthrug you knock over an ornament on your mantle- 
 piece ; picking up the pieces you read, on the bit that 
 formed the base, " Manufactured in Germany." And you 
 jot your dismal reflections down with a pencil that was 
 made in Germany. At midnight your wife comes home 
 from an opera which was made in Germany, has been 
 here enacted by singers and conductor and players made 
 in Germany, with the aid of instruments and sheets of 
 music made in Germany. You go to bed, and glare 
 wrathf ully at a text on the wall ; it is illuminated with 
 an English village church, and it was " Printed in Ger- 
 many." If you are imaginative and dyspeptic, you drop 
 off to sleep only to dream that St. Peter (with a duly 
 stamped halo round his head and a bunch of keys from the 
 Ehineland) has refused you admission into Paradise, be- 
 cause you bear not the Mark of the Beast upon your fore- 
 head, and are not of German make. But you console 
 yourself with the thought that it was only a Bierhaus 
 Paradise any way ; and you are awakened in the morning 
 by the sonorous brass of a German band. 
 
12 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 Is the picture exaggerated 1 Bear with me, while I 
 tabulate a few figures from the Official Returns of Her 
 Majesty's Custom House, where, at any rate, fancy and 
 exaggeration have no play. In '95 Germany sent us linen 
 manufactures to the value of 91,257 ; cotton manufactures 
 to the value of 536,471 ; embroidery and needlework to 
 the value of 11,309 ; leather gloves to the value of 
 27,934 (six times the amount imported six years earlier) ; 
 and woollen manufactures to the value of 1,016,694. 
 Despite the exceeding cheapness of toys, the value of 
 German-made playthings for English nurseries amounted, 
 in '95, to 459,944. In the same year she sent us 
 books to the value of 37,218, and paper to the value 
 of 586,835. For musical instruments we paid her as much 
 as 563,018; for china and earthenware 216,876; for 
 prints, engravings, and photographs, 1 1 1,825. This recital 
 of the moneys which in one year have come out of John 
 Bull's pocket for the purchase of his German-made house- 
 hold goods is, I submit disproof enough of any charge of 
 alarmism. For these articles, it must be remembered, are 
 not like oranges and guano. They are not products which 
 we must either import or lack : they all belong to the 
 category of English manufactures, the most important of 
 them, indeed, being articles in the preparation of which 
 Great Britain is held pre-eminent. The total value of 
 manufactured goods imported into the United Kingdom 
 by Germany rose from 16,629,987 in '83 to 21,632,614 
 in '93 : an increase of 30*08 per cent. 
 
 A few figures more. I said that a little while since 
 Germany was a large importer of manufactures needed for 
 her own consumption. Take as a first example, the iron 
 and steel industries. In '78 the make of pig-iron in Ger- 
 many was 2,147,000 tons ; in '95 it was 5,788,000 tons. 
 Germany made in '78 492,512 tons of steel; in '94 
 3,617,000 tons. Her import and export statistics tell the 
 same tale. In '80 her iron exports only totalled 1,301,000 
 
THE GERMAN AS DIPLOMATIST 13 
 
 tons \ in '94 they stood at 2,008,000 tons. (In the same 
 period England's exports of iron had decreased.) In the 
 matter of cottons Germany exported 14,666,100 kilogs. in 
 '83 j in '93, 33,350,800 kilogs., an increase of more than 
 1 27 per cent. (England's increase in the same period was only 
 about 2^ per cent.) Shipping returns are a pretty sure test 
 of commercial prosperity : it is therefore significant that in 
 '93 the total tonnage of the sea-going ships which touched 
 at Hamburg for the first time left Liverpool behind, and in 
 '94 Hamburg cut her record of the year before. 1 
 
 TJie German as Diplomatist 
 
 In speaking of German methods and successes, I men- 
 tioned commercial diplomacy. It is a subject worth 
 considering. Commercial Treaties were the "note" of 
 Count Capri vi's policy : they were his substitute for the 
 rigorous Protection of the Bismarckian " regiment." The 
 Tariff Treaty with Russia, which practically completes 
 the series, is also the most important. Russia is a large 
 exporter of agricultural produce to her good neighbour, 
 who returns her manufactures. Up to a few years ago 
 the Protective Duties on both sides were fairly heavy ; but 
 in the early Nineties the Russian duties showed a tendency 
 to increase at an alarming rate. Germany reciprocated 
 and a Tariff War set in, which threatened to destroy the 
 commerce between the two countries. 
 
 On the 1st of June, '93, Russia resolved on the intro- 
 duction of a twofold tariff rate. There were costly 
 reprisals, and by August an acute stage was reached. 
 Consternation reigned in many German factories, where 
 stocks of goods for the Russian market were held back, 
 because of the prohibitive Tariff. But negotiations between 
 the two Governments were afoot, and in the February of 
 
 1 Hamburg Consul-General's Report, Foreign Office, 1895. Annual 
 Series, No. 1623. 
 
14 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 '94 an agreement was concluded, whereby very large 
 reductions were made in the duties on imported goods. 
 The Russian duty on hops, for example, was reduced 65 
 per cent., that on coal and coke 50 per cent, (as was that 
 on electric cables) ; while on dynamo-electric machines it 
 fell from 4 r. 80 c. to 1 r. 40 c. Still more remarkable is 
 the case of collars, cuffs, and shirt-fronts made of cotton- 
 covered paper, the duty on which was brought from 72 r. 
 down to 2 r. 40 c. per poud. Velvet plushes were reduced 
 from 7 r. 50 c. to 3 r., and silk and half -silk umbrellas 
 from 1 r. to 30 c. And so on almost through all the list 
 of manufactures. One exception, however, is worth 
 noting : the 35 c. duty on raw iron was reduced by 5 c. 
 only. A further reduction was proposed, but the German 
 Government said it was not wanted, inasmuch as to lower 
 the tariff would be to profit England, who would come into 
 the arrangement under her Favoured Nation clause. These 
 reductions are to the last degree helpful to, and are highly 
 appreciated by, industrial Germany ; but it is said that she 
 sets still greater store by the security and solidity bred by 
 a ten years' Treaty. Another effect of the Treaty is to 
 equalise the duties on imports entering Russia by sea with 
 imports entering Russia by land : which is another change 
 to England's hurt. Germany now holds the field, in fact, 
 and it will be no fault of hers if England be not ousted bag 
 and baggage. 
 
 A further outlet has been secured in the Promised Land 
 across the Atlantic, where the Chicago Exhibition fired the 
 German genius to a white heat. The Imperial Government 
 has supplemented the efforts of private traders by attach- 
 ing a Commercial Agent to the Consulate-General at 
 Chicago. This gentleman, who is the author of a book on 
 The Promotion of the German Export Trade to the United 
 States, has been instructed to keep his countrymen in- 
 formed of the conditions of commerce and the market, and 
 to direct their attention to new openings for German trade ; 
 also to direct the attention of American commercial houses 
 
GERMAN TRADE WITH OTHER COUNTRIES *6 
 
 to the advantages of business with Germany. In the first 
 year of his appointment he got into direct relations with 
 over eight hundred firms and associations, and did his utmost 
 to submit in person the catalogues and samples sent him 
 from home. He has likewise been instructed to recommend 
 trustworthy agents, and to furnish information respecting 
 the standing amd repute of particular American firms and 
 the nature of American methods and processes. He has 
 extended the sphere of his usefulness by re-visiting his 
 native country and lecturing to its people on the several 
 ways and directions in which they may increase their trade 
 with the United States. The German Government has 
 sent out another gentleman to the Argentine to report on 
 commerce there. He had already done similar duty in 
 New Guinea. 
 
 Germany has been equally fortunate in her diplomacy 
 with England. By the treaty of the 30th May, 1865, 
 England abdicated the power to enter into such fiscal t 
 arrangements with her own colonies as would enable the 
 colonies to discriminate in the tariffs they charge between 
 goods coming from the Mother Country and from Germany. 
 Belgium, three years earlier, got England to sign a similar 
 treaty. The irony of the thing is to be found in the fact 
 that Belgium and Germany are the two countries which, 
 since the date of the treaties, have most effectually com- 1 
 peted with England for the trade in English colonies ! 
 The colonies have since been wondering why their mother 
 was such a fool. 
 
 German Trade with other Countries 
 
 As with Great Britain so with the other nations of the 
 world, and with some to a still greater extent. I have 
 already referred to German relations with Kussia. In 
 iron, iron goods, and machinery, German exports to the 
 latter country amounted in '93 to 505,881 met. centners, 
 and to 1,568,002 met. centners in '94. The figures for 
 '95 will show a yet more startling growth. In contrast is 
 
16 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 , England's lapse from 161,413 tons in '93 to 138,318 tons 
 in '94. Again, in '94, Germany exported to Russia fine 
 leather to almost double the amount she sent in '93, and 
 paper goods to more than double. Passing from East to 
 West, you find a growing trade between Germany and the 
 United States. From 175,721,000 marks in '84 the value 
 of the exports increased to 288,669,000 marks in '94 ; and 
 as this was with falling prices, the actual quantities of 
 goods would show a yet greater difference. 1 The largest 
 exports, it is important to note, were of half -silk goods, 
 cotton hosiery, and woollen cloths ; for in these articles 
 Germany is in especial competition with ourselves. The 
 English Minister at Dresden has commented in an official 
 despatch on the remarkable increase of trade between 
 Saxony and the United States. 2 The Saxon exports to 
 North America for the year ending June '95 were 60 
 per cent, greater in value than those of the preceding 
 year. Canada in like manner, notwithstanding the 
 protests of her statesmen that they desire above all things 
 to deal with England, is transferring her shopping to 
 Germany. It was officially reported to the Reichstag in 
 March, '95, that this trade had increased tenfold in the 
 last few years, and a Consul de Carriere has been regularly 
 appointed to look after it. In South America German 
 merchants are making a peculiar effort ; and in '94 the 
 exports to Brazil, valued at 16,223,000 marks in '84, 
 were valued at 63,577,000 marks. 1 Passing from West to 
 East : German trade with Japan has made such gigantic 
 strides that the English Consul-General at Frankfort 
 devotes some pages of his Annual Report to it. Here is an 
 extract : " In the year 1869 the value of Germany's direct 
 exports to Japan did not amount to 1,000,000 marks. In 
 1888, l however, it rose from 5,000,000 to 18,000,000 
 
 1 As the exports from the Hanse Towns were not included in the 
 German exports prior to 1889, the difference is not quite so great as 
 appears from the figures. 
 
 Board of Trade Journal, March, 1895, p. 332. 
 
GERMAN TRADE WITH OTHER COUNTRIES 17 
 
 marks ; in 1891 it again sank to 14,300,000 marks, to 
 rise again in 1892 to 17,100,000 marks, and in 1893 
 to 18,500,000 marks." 1 And now Germany is prepar- 
 ing a Commercial Treaty with Japan on which she 
 founds great hopes. Even in Egypt, where it might 
 be presumed that England's commercial influence would 
 be paramount, the Germans are encroaching formid- 
 ably, the value of their exports having mounted from 
 2,266,000 marks in '80 to 7,143,000 marks in '94. These 
 are the statistical values ; the actual figures are probably 
 higher. 2 Of Bulgaria The Board of Trade Journal 
 relates 3 that " the efforts shown by the Germans to 
 secure the largest possible market would appear to be 
 crowned with success." This is well within the truth : 
 Germany has already given us a handsome beating ; for, 
 whereas in '85 Bulgaria took German goods to the value 
 of 2,082,000 lew, 4 in '93 she took them to the value of 
 12,060,000 lew. In '84 German exports to Australasia 
 were valued at 6,315,000 marks; in '93 they amounted 
 to 17,963,000. To give a single detail: four-fifths of 
 the musical instruments imported to these colonies are 
 ''Made in Germany." Let me cite the Transvaal as 
 a final instance. Some people just now are evincing 
 a disposition to minimize German influence in that 
 Republic ; let them digest this. During the years 1891 
 to 1892 the exportation of the German Customs Union 
 to the South African Republic had reached an average 
 value of no more than 72,000. In 1893 it rose to 
 192,000/.; in 1894 to 288,000/.; and in 1895 to about 
 336,000/. 
 
 1 Foreign Office, 1895. Annual Series, No. 1586. 
 
 2 Frankfort Consul- General's Report, Foreign Office. Annual Series, 
 1894. No. 340, p. 12. But see note on previous page. 
 
 3 February, 1895, p. 214. 
 
 4 There are 25 lew to the English pound sterling. 
 
18 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 The Significance of these Facts 
 
 These are the sober to believers in our eternal rule, 
 the sobering facts. They are picked almost at random 
 from a mass of others of like import, and I think they are 
 sufficient to prove that my general statements are neither 
 untrue nor unduly emphatic. And yet the data needed 
 for the purpose of showing the parlous condition into 
 which our trade is drifting are still largely to seek. 
 Germany is yet in her industrial infancy; and the 
 healthiest infant can do but poor battle against a grown 
 man. England, with her enormous capital, and the sway 
 she has wielded for a century over the world-market, is as 
 that strong man. Now, to tell a strong man, conscious of 
 his strength to an over-weening degree, that he is in peril 
 from a half -grown youngster, is to invite his derision ; and 
 yet if a strong man, as the years advance on him, neglect 
 himself and abuse his strength, he may fall before an 
 energetic stripling. Germany has already put our trade 
 in a bad way \ but the worst lies in the future, and it is 
 hard to convince the average Englishman of this. He will 
 admit that Germany's trade has increased, and that at 
 many points it hits our own ; but here his robust insularity 
 asserts itself. Germany has not the capital, he will tell 
 you ; her workmen are no workmen at all ; her capitalists 
 and her managers are poor bureaucratic plodders ; the 
 world will soon find out that her products are not of 
 English make, and so forth. And he goes on vocalising 
 Rule Britannia in his best commercial prose. 
 
 Now, though much can be set down in plain figures, 
 which serve not only to mark the distance already 
 traversed, but also to indicate the Whither we are 
 nearing, there remains much more which cannot be 
 tabulated with arithmetical conciseness. The student has 
 to content himself with hints, and (as Walt Whitman 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THESE FACTS J3 
 
 would say) " indirections " ; and the further he sur- 
 veys the field the more numerous do these finger-posts 
 and danger-signals appear. It is impossible as yet to 
 estimate the perils to which our commerce is exposed. 
 For example, it is affirmed that the operation of the 
 Merchandise Marks Act is to a certain extent damaging to 
 many branches of English trade. Yet, in spite of diligent 
 efforts, the data necessary to a knowledge of the extent of 
 the damage have eluded those who have sought for them. 
 
 Similarly elusive are calculations as to the exact bearings 
 of the excess of imports over exports. The disparity has 
 now existed for a number of years, and, instead of showing 
 a disposition to right itself, the returns are still worse 
 reading than of old. (In '95 the difference amounted to 
 more than 190,000,000.) One may, of course, make too 
 much of the fact : because, as Sir Robert Giffen has 
 pointed out, our immense shipping business entitles us to a 
 corresponding amount of imported goods in payment for 
 the carrying work we do. But Sir Robert goes, I venture 
 to submit, too far on his cheerful way when he says that 
 all is well. Our carrying and commission trades do not 
 bring in sufficient income to balance the disparity between 
 exports and imports. It has been averred that the 
 existence of a deficit implies that we are living on our 
 capital. This Sir Robert denies. In one point of view, 
 no doubt, he is right. We are still a lending rather than 
 a borrowing nation, and he contends that we are only 
 expending our interest from foreign investments. Grant- 
 ing that this is so (it is practically impossible to get 
 figures on the point) the question must yet be asked : 
 Can we afford thus to spend all our income in foreign 
 shops % Ought we not to be adding a good portion of it to 
 our capital, in order to retain our position as the wealthiest 
 nation % A man with a thousand pounds is a rich man, as 
 long as none of his neighbours have more than a hundred ; 
 but if they increase their possessions to ten thousand 
 
20 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 a-piece, his thousand spells poverty. If, then, he would 
 maintain his position he must increase his wealth. Now, 
 other industrial States (notably Germany) are adding year 
 by year to their capital. No : this excess of our imports is 
 not a healthy sign. 1 
 
 What it Means to Us 
 
 According to Sir Robert Giffen, it doesn't mean much : 
 if we lose ground in one industry, we make up for it by 
 increased production in another. The worst of this com- 
 fortable theory is that a very simple test knocks it to 
 pieces. Those very statistics with which Sir Robert is so 
 well acquainted prove that this assumption of a correlative 
 gain is a figment. In '72 the total declared value of 
 British and Irish produce exported from the United King- 
 dom was 256,257,347 ; in '95 it had sunk to 226,169,174 ; 
 and in the meantime the population of Great Britain and 
 Ireland had grownfrom 31,835,757 to 39,134,166. 2 In the 
 meantime, also, the world's consumption of European 
 manufactures had hugely increased. Not only is the 
 demand greater : owing to the introduction of fresh labour- 
 saving machinery, and other appliances and discoveries, 
 the capacity for production has been largely augmented. 
 The market is bigger, the ability to supply the market is 
 greater ; but, whereas the proportion per head of exported 
 British produce was 8 1 s. Qd. in ' 7 2, it had sunk to 5 1 1 s. 3d . 
 in '94. This is what foreign competition means to us. It 
 means, too, as a deduction from these figures, that that 
 gaunt skeleton in our industrial cupboard which is called 
 the Unemployed, presents a problem like to grow ever 
 
 It is worthy of note that while the total imports into England 
 declined in value by 22,000,000 between '83 and '93, the imports of 
 manufactured articles increased by over 13,000,000. 
 
 2 If it be objected that 1872 was a specially prosperous year, let it 
 In: also remembered that 1895 was also, compared with its immediate 
 predecessors. 
 
WHAT IT MEANS TO US ^21 
 
 more acute and ever less easy of solution. And it means 
 that the work which we have is less profitable than here- 
 tofore : for the first result of competition is the cutting 
 of prices. The market is glutted with goods from the 
 new Continental factories, and prices go unalterably 
 down. Thus, in '65 the average price of cotton piece 
 goods was 5 -05c?. per yard : in '94 it was 2d. Printed 
 linens also have declined from 9'21d. per yard in '65 to 
 5'37d. in '94. Galvanised iron has receded from ,25 -04 
 per ton in '65 to 11*49 in '94. It is everywhere the 
 same : each year the output has to be greater, the strain 
 more intense to achieve the same return ; and it is no 
 wonder that the nation is falling more and more a prey to 
 neurotic diseases. Some people may be able to regard all 
 this with cheerfulness ; but the attitude is rather a tribute 
 to their buoyancy of temperament than to their common 
 sense. For the rest of us, the prospect is discouraging. 
 "We have seen agriculture (our old-time staple industry, 
 before we went after the strange gods of Machinery) hope- 
 lessly depressed, and as little able to save us as the faded 
 deities of Rome the falling Empire. Now we see our new 
 gods deserting us for other nations. Industrial depression 
 has of late years been the rule, instead of the exception. 
 Our population is still waxing, and our means of providing 
 it with an income are dwindling. Is it not time to look 
 things squarely in the face % 
 
 To attempt to do so is my present purpose. I hold no 
 brief for any doctrine or remedy : these papers are not 
 prompted by the Bimetallic League nor by devotion to 
 Fair Trade, nor by any of the economic schemes and 
 doctrines which reformers are propounding for the cure of 
 our commercial dry-rot. It is my object to proceed on 
 scientific lines : to collect and arrange the facts so that 
 they may clearly show forth the causes, and point with 
 inevitableness to the remedies, if and where there be any. 
 In this preliminary survey I have but indicated certain 
 
22 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 leading facts, and have striven carefully to eschew the 
 discussion of causes or cures. Afterwards, I propose to go 
 into detail respecting the position of those trades which 
 are feeling worst the impact of the German wedge. It 
 will then be proper to discuss why the German beats us, 
 and what we must do to be saved. 
 
II 
 
 IRON AND STEEL 
 
 The Doctor's Little Joke 
 
 1 ' We may not refuse to acknowledge it were indeed ungrateful to 
 pass over in silence before our English guests the fact that by far 
 the greater number of important inventions and improvements in the 
 manufacture of iron have proceeded from Great Britain ; but you, our 
 English visitors, will also acknowledge, as soon as you shall have 
 learned to know our iron industry, that on the other hand the 
 Germans have known how to adapt that which they have received 
 from you to their local circumstances with advantage, and to develop 
 it in a way peculiar to themselves." 
 
 Thus Dr. Hermann Wedding, of Berlin, the occasion 
 being the visit of the English Iron and Steel Institute to 
 Diisseldorf in August, '80. The Doctor's tongue was in 
 his cheek, yet the irony of his remarks was apparently- 
 lost on his English hearers, for history records no comment 
 in reply from any one of them : only that they proceeded 
 with discussions on Dephosphorization, the relative merits 
 of an open hearth and a Bessemer converter, and other 
 cryptics of their craft. And when the time of feasting, 
 and talk, and sight-seeing was over, they returned to their 
 native land, and then, in the fulness of time, they perused 
 the fatuous reports of the British Iron Trade Association, 
 which bade them sleep on, sleep ever. And they did as 
 they were bid, until the other day, when they awoke to 
 the fact that their trade was gone. 
 
24 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 The World's Ironmaster 
 
 This is not the place for a disquisition on the Iron 
 Industry as practised by our prehistoric forefathers : albeit 
 the trade is ancient enough to yield the matter of many 
 volumes. Nor will it profit us to analyse the swordsmith's 
 methods in the British and Roman eras, nor the progress 
 of his art through the Middle Ages. Suffice to say that 
 for centuries past we Britons have been noted for our 
 proficiency in the manufacture of iron, wherein we had 
 made our mark among nations ever we had begun to 
 handle coals, and whilst our smelting was done with the 
 charcoal-burner's aid. Dud Dudley, one of the fathers of 
 English iron he might, indeed, be styled its Patriarch 
 tells of 20,000 smiths who settled in one locality of 
 England for the prosecution of what was then a true craft. 
 This notwithstanding, it was marked out by Fate to be 
 the first to show forth the power and glory of the Great 
 Industry ; to Dudley himself, a hundred years before the 
 birth of the Industrial Revolution, it was reserved (in 
 1665), to herald the new order with the publication of his 
 Metallum Martis. Dudley's chief practical contribution to 
 the work consisted in the introduction of pit coal for 
 smelting, whereby, as he proudly tells, he made seven tons 
 of pig-iron per week in his own furnace. Mr. Daniel 
 Jones, Secretary to the South Staffordshire Ironmasters' 
 Association, in a paper read to the Iron and Steel Institute 
 Congress at Birmingham in '95, appears to favour 1730 
 when coke began to be used in the blast furnace as the 
 starting-point of England's true pre-eminence. Be this as 
 it may, by the time that Watt's steam engine, and Cort's 
 grooved rolls (1783), and Joseph Hall's introduction of the 
 boiling process in puddling furnaces (1811), and Neilson's 
 great discovery of the hot blast (1828) to name a few 
 epoch-making innovations had become integral factors in 
 production and manufacture, Britain had won her supremacy, 
 
1CHAB0D! 25 
 
 and was ready to take full advantage of the crowning 
 triumph of the Basic Steel process (1878). She was rich 
 in ore, and her ironmasters had learned how best to deal 
 with it, and to work the extract into manufactures ; and 
 in '82 we touched our high-water mark. For in that year 
 our total production of pig-iron stood at 8,493,287 tons ; 
 of puddled bar, at 2,841,534; and of Bessemer steel rails, 
 at 1,235,785 tons. We were the ironmasters of the world 
 an easy first in every branch of production. 
 
 Ichabod ! 
 
 And now all that is changed. The world's consumption 
 is greater than ever before, yet our contribution in the 
 years since '82 has dropped at a rate well-nigh unknown in 
 the history of any trade in any land. From the 8,493,287 
 tons of '82, pig-iron has gone hustling down to the 7,364,745 
 tons of '94. In '94 the 2,841,534 tons of puddled bar of 
 '82 is represented by 1,339,062; the 1,235,785 tons of 
 Bessemer steel rails by 598,530. (In '93 they had touched 
 a still lower point.) Steel has largely taken the place of 
 iron. To say nothing of the consumer, it is much more 
 profitable to the producer, inasmuch as its manufacture 
 needs only about a fourth the fuel which is used in that of 
 finished iron, with less than half the labour. But little 
 comfort is to be drawn from the modern preference for it. 
 Hails began to go down in '83, and since '90 other manu- 
 factures have taken the downward road of the older 
 industries. In '89 we produced 2,140,000 tons of Bessemer 
 steel ingots ; in '94 only 1,535,364. The Export Eeturns 
 tell a similar tale. In '82 4,353,552 tons of iron and 
 steel, partly or wholly manufactured, left the United 
 Kingdom ; in '94 the total reached was only 2,649,998. 
 The production of ores, too, has declined from over eighteen 
 million tons in '80 to twelve and a third million in '94. 
 The case of comparative, as opposed to absolute, production, 
 
26 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 is even worse ; but as we shall see, neither Belgium nor 
 Germany (to name our leading competitors) has passed her 
 zenith, nor shows the slightest signs of having neared it. 
 
 To turn from quantities to values is to have no better 
 reason for satisfaction. Prices have started to go down, 
 and are ever in that melancholy way. 1 Let us compare 
 the present prices and those of twenty years ago. In '65 
 old iron fetched 4*25 per ton j in '94 2-66. In that 
 year pig-iron and puddled bar sold at 58* 4 Is. per ton ; in 
 '94 at 46 -04s. For bar, angle, bolt, and rod 8*65 per ton 
 was paid in '65 ; in '95 6 '38. Railroad iron has fallen in 
 thirty years from 8-18 per ton to 4*43 ; wire, from 
 19-64 per ton to 17*90 ; sheets and plates, from 12*38 
 to 9*13 ; galvanised iron, from 25*04 to 11*49 j hoops, 
 from 10*23 to 6*68; tinned plates, from 23*61 to 
 12*26; cast or wrought iron, from 15*23 to 12*91. 
 With steel the " decline and fall off " are still worse. In 
 '65 the ruling price for steel manufactures is 68*62 per 
 ton ; by '94 it has run down to 26*69. Improved pro- 
 cesses account for some of this especially in steel ; but to 
 this there is a set-off due to higher rents and wages, which 
 have increased the cost of production in all industries ; and 
 labour-saving inventions do not account for anything like 
 the differences in price. Their explanation lies in the cut- 
 throat conditions developed by competition. 
 
 The wrecking has not gone on evenly throughout the 
 Kingdom, but has been done to a great extent in sections, 
 the Black Country furnishing the most conspicuous instance. 
 Between 1796 and 1871 the number of South Staffordshire's 
 blast furnaces increased from 14 to 163. In the latter year 
 
 1 The gentleman who contributed an article to the Iron and Coal 
 Trades Review on the part of this chapter which appeared in the New 
 Review poured scorn on my reference to prices. He said I got them 
 from the Board of Trade Returns, which was quite true ; and that 
 they were there represented as values, and not prices, which is quite 
 untrue ; and he drew a distinction which was quite unnecessary, and 
 in the circumstances altogether foolish. 
 
TCHABOD ! 27 
 
 she attained her zenith. Her decline since then has been 
 practically continuous : till, in June, '95, the number of 
 furnaces in blast stood at 19 ! True, we must deduct a 
 certain something from these figures as they stand in their 
 startling nakedness ; for, whereas the annual output per 
 furnace was 6,720 tons in '71, it was 14,360 tons in '94 ; 
 and a further allowance must be made for the supersession 
 of iron by steel, which is also manufactured in this district. 
 But even so, the net fall is tremendous : the total output 
 of iron in '71 being 725,716 tons, whilst in '94 it was only 
 315,924; and yet there is every reason why the South 
 Staffordshire iron trade should continue to flourish, and 
 that apart from the foreign market (whose demand is 
 greater than in former years). The home market 
 especially that part of it which is comprised in the im- 
 mediate neighbourhood still requires enormous quantities 
 of iron and steel, and the district is particularly fortunate 
 in the number of its allied trades. Mr. Daniel Jones has 
 compiled a list of no less than seventy ; and he calls it only 
 a list "of some of the allied trades" all of them, from 
 anchor and art-metal works to wire-rope and vice and anvil 
 makers, extensive customers of the iron-master. An un- 
 fortunate result of this piecemeal disintegration of the trade 
 is that the districts, which are not at the moment affected, 
 are apt to be blinded to the change, or to miss its signifi- 
 cance ; while the complaints of those affected are treated as 
 merely an effect of local misfortunes, contingent on a slight 
 geographical alteration of the industry. It is needful, 
 therefore, to point out the general character of the debdcle. 
 " Debdcle " may be objected to as excessive, and my assertion 
 that the trade " has gone " may be controverted as an 
 exaggeration in view of the bulk to which the English out- 
 put still attains. But the comparative examination of our 
 manufacture and that of other countries will prove that 
 my words do not exceed the bounds of truthfulness and 
 moderation. 
 
28 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 The Current Revival 
 
 The recent expansion of trade is another pitfall for the 
 unwary optimist ; it prompts him to the belief that the late 
 decline was only a temporary depression, which is already 
 being put right. Now undoubtedly the revival of '95 has 
 beneficially affected the iron and steel, as well as other, 
 industries, and that year's returns show an improvement on 
 '94. But the consolation to be derived therefrom is subject 
 to heavy discount. In the first place, there is no sign that 
 this revival will be of sufficient extent to bring us back to 
 the level of '82 or even of '89 j while the plane from which 
 it started was the lowest yet touched. Secondly, our com- 
 petitors are feeling the expansion to a much greater extent 
 than ourselves. And, thirdly, these spasmodic revivals are 
 inevitably, and quickly, followed by a revulsion to bad 
 times. The temporary brightness stimulates over-produc- 
 tion ; manufacturers put on their rose-coloured spectacles : 
 and when they take them off, to rub their eyes and view 
 the reality of things, they are lucky if they do not find 
 their last state worse than their first. Signs of over- 
 production are even now apparent. According to published 
 returns of the make of pig-iron for the first half of '95, the 
 increase over the first half of '94 is only from 3,708,270 to 
 3,721,870 tons a mere trifle, and accounted for chiefly by 
 Scotland's enlarged output. Lancashire, West Cumberland, 
 South Staffordshire, South and West Yorkshire, &c, show- 
 ing actual and large decreases. There was also on the 30th 
 of Juue, '95, a net increase of 311,210 tons in the stocks of 
 pig-iron on the record for the same date of '94 : which is 
 not a matter for gratification. It contrasts ominously, too, 
 with the reports in the trade journals from Germany as 
 that : " The current consumptive demands can be barely 
 supplied;" or, "The blast furnaces are working at their 
 full capacity on current contracts, and nothing has to be 
 sent into store" which have occurred with regularity and 
 
THE CURRENT REVIVAL 29 
 
 frequency in recent months. But even in the midst of the 
 genial influences we hear stories of damped furnaces and 
 closed works which must disconcert such optimists as deign 
 to hear them. Our daily papers have been sandwiching 
 their paeans of joy over the cheerful Board of Trade Returns 
 with such paragraphs as this : 
 
 The Barrow Steel Works, employing about 3,000 men, have been 
 closed, owing to scarcity of orders, and to the unremunerative prices 
 of what orders were forthcoming. The Duke of Devonshire recently 
 reduced royalty rents, and a reduction was made in railway rates, 
 but not sufficient to enable the concern to be worked at a profit. 
 
 Or this : 
 
 The tinplate trade in this district [South Wales] is in a most 
 
 deplorable state Manufacturers are unable to carry on their 
 
 works, and about 150 mills are idle. 
 
 Taking the country generally, you find that of its 103 
 Bessemer converters, 43 were altogether unemployed 
 during the first half of '95 ; and it is estimated that not 
 more than six were worked to full capacity. 1 The returns 
 for the 1st November, '95, show 347 furnaces in blast, and 
 334 out of it. If the number of furnaces damped down or 
 dismantled of late had been included in the returns, the 
 figures would read still worse. 
 
 Our Neighbour the Belgian 
 
 England's supremacy, even when it was least dubitable, 
 was not unchallenged. One country, small in area, but 
 rich in raw material and commercial activity Belgium 
 to wit has long meant business. She claims, indeed, by 
 the mouth of M. Julien Deby, 2 to be well-nigh as old- 
 established a firm as ourselves ; and no doubt M. Deby 
 was speaking by the book when he declared that, in 1560, 
 his native country had 35 blast furnaces and 85 forges at 
 work. In 1800 " twelve tons of excellent iron " were 
 
 1 Iron and Coal Trades Review, 22ud November, '95. 
 
 2 Iron and Steel Institute Journal, '73 : "Rise and Progress of Iron 
 and Steel Industries in Belgium." 
 
30 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 made with coke alone, and each year saw the production, 
 steadily increased, of many tons of iron, excellent or other- 
 wise. 1 800 was also the year of the circular blast furnace, 
 taller than any hitherto constructed, and equal to an 
 output (considered enormous) of 3 tons per day. '21 
 
 Belgium put up her first puddling furnace, and by '48 she 
 was sending iron to such near neighbours as France, 
 Germany, and Holland. Twenty years later a far larger 
 clientele had been tapped, and Belgian rails were being 
 exported to America, Turkey, Egypt, Cuba, Rio, Chili, and 
 (as in flagrant challenge) England. Of Belgian iron we 
 bought 11,630 tons in '68. It was about this time that 
 Belgium set herself in earnest to the manufacture of steel. 
 Whereas in '61 her whole output was only 2,675 tons, 
 eleven years later the province of Liege alone turned out 
 15,284 tons, or twice the amount of the previous year ! To 
 economise detail : in '93 the Belgian output of foundry- 
 pig, forge, and Bessemer-pig, was 745,264 metric tons ; 
 of finished iron, rails, and plates, 113,602 metric tons; 
 of steel ingots, &c, 273,113 tons; of rails, plates, &c, 
 224,922 tons. And big as the increase was, it represents 
 no culminating effort, as an examination of the next year's 
 figures shows. In '94 foundry-pig, forge, and Bessemer-pig- 
 iron went up to 810,940 metric tons an increase over '93 
 of 8 "81 per cent, (including a reduction in forge-iron) ; 
 finished iron, rails, and plates to 122,474 metric tons 
 an increase of 7*81 per cent. ; steel ingots, &c, reached 
 396,914 metric tons an increase of 31*20 per cent. ; and 
 steel rails, plates, &c, rose to 314,776 metric tons a per- 
 centage increase of 53 , 49. 1 
 
 There is an impression current that, except in the pro- 
 duction of rails, Belgium cuts but a very poor figure 
 in the steel-making world. It needs correction. True, 
 
 1 The rise was continued in '95, when 816,040 tons of pig iron were 
 made ; and there were slight increases over '94 in the production of 
 manufactured iron goods, while both cast and wrought steel show 
 advances of about 50,000 tons each. 
 
OUR NEIGHBOUR THE BELGIAN 31 
 
 steel rails are at present her specialty ; but, as my figures 
 prove, she is making great strides in other departments, 
 particularly in the manufacture of light girders. It is 
 stated that " every pound of the iron roof of the large rail- 
 way station in Middlesborough is made of Belgian iron " 1 
 in Middlesborough, one of the chief centres of our iron 
 trade. In fact, her present position in the joint trades 
 was tersely (and accurately) summed up by Professor 
 A. Gillon, in a paper read before the Iron and Steel 
 Institute at its meeting in Belgium ('94). 2 " Nearly as 
 much wrought iron is made in Belgium as there was ten 
 years ago, and the production of steel has increased some 
 50 per cent.," and the Professor dotted the i's in the state- 
 ment by remarking elsewhere in the same paper : " From 
 the commercial aspect, the situation of our blast furnaces 
 is satisfactory, and prices are remunerative." As regards 
 the future, M. Gillon' s attitude is one of chastened hope. 
 He loyally testifies to " the exceeding foresight and the 
 sustained energy of our King" in the matter of that 
 " invaluable outlet," the Congo Free State, which " already 
 requires a noteworthy quantity of metals from our country"; 
 and he boldly prophesies that " Belgian commerce has not 
 yet made its last efforts to spread itself over the world." 
 But he is fearful of the Fatherland : " German competi- 
 tion, especially, thanks to its protected home market, 
 can afford, without incurring loss, such decreases in price 
 as to reduce our industries to difficult straits." And 
 he adds : u In Great Britain and in Belgium similar 
 conditions are found in several respects. Their exterior 
 commerce endures the same attacks from the same causes." 
 Which leads me to a consideration of iron and steel 
 in Germany. 
 
 1 Letter of Mr. H. Simon, of Manchester, quoted in Iron and Coal 
 Trades Hevieiv, 31st January, 1896. 
 
 2 Iron and Steel Institute Journal, 94, No. II, p. 7 : " The Iron 
 and Steel Industries of Belgium." 
 
32 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 Our Neighbour the German. 
 Few nations on the earth's surface but are in some sort 
 ironmakers (even the African savage has his forge), so 
 that German professors with a turn for research can prove 
 without difficulty that iron was produced and manufactured 
 in Germany many centuries before it began to figure in 
 the Kaiser's Export Returns. Did not the mighty Sieg- 
 fried, in those far-off days when Wotan ruled in Walhalla, 
 forge his own invincible sword in that very Rhineland, 
 too, now blackening with furnace-reek and the waste 
 of collieries? Yet, if we come down to Christian times, 
 we shall find the Germans, in the opening period of the 
 iron-trade's development, a good century behind ourselves. 
 True, they claim to have invented in 1500 the charcoal 
 blast-furnace, which was not known to us till 1534 ; but 
 that was long ere the birth of the modern industry ; and, 
 as matter of fact, they did not erect their first coke blast- 
 furnace until 1796, whereas England had begun to experi- 
 ment with this all-important invention one hundred and 
 eighty-five years before then, and had been successfully 
 working coke furnaces for seventy-four years ere the first 
 was set going in Upper Silesia. But a history of iron 
 in Germany is not possible in this place ; so I shall content 
 myself with calling attention to a rather important fact 
 which may be gleaned from the study of it : that the 
 Germans proved themselves slow to invent, but having 
 once addressed themselves in earnest to the work ex- 
 tremely quick to profit by the inventions of other nations, 
 particularly the English. This fact comes also to the 
 front in the history of other German industries, and 
 in due course we shall note its import. For the present, 
 and as regards the iron and steel trades, let it be borne in 
 mind in connexion with the rapid advance from insig- 
 nificance achieved by the Germans in the middle years 
 of the Nineteenth Century. Of late the pace has quickened 
 marvellously. Dr. Wedding has collected statistics relating 
 
OUR NEIGHBOUR THE GERMAN 
 
 33 
 
 to Prussia between '37 and '79, 1 which in pig-iron show an 
 advance from 90,500 tons in the former year to 1,639,676 
 tons in the latter; of castings from 6,896 to 304,612 tons; 
 and of malleable iron from 74,348 to 1,477,116 tons. Yet 
 '79, so far from being a culmination, is usually, and more 
 properly, regarded as the beginning of an era in the manu- 
 facturing development of Germany ! Speaking of foundry- 
 pig-iron, Herr C. Miiller points out 2 : that it was " the im- 
 position of Protective Duties in Germany in '79 that|f 
 led to an important improvement of the position, both! 
 output and consumption increasing largely in Germany! 
 while the imports from other countries were diminished." I 
 Protection, however, was not the sole impelling force.* 
 ^bout this time there were introduced those Dephosphorizing 
 Processes which enabled the German to make use of the 
 low-grade and cheap phosphoric ores of the Moselle, Lor- 
 raine, and Luxembourg (up to this date useless for the 
 production of Bessemer-pig-iron), and relieved him of his 
 dependence on the dearer ores of Bilbao and elsewhere. 
 The fields thus opened were large and were easy of access ; 
 and the introduction of the Basic Process had such a 
 stimulating effect on the German steel manufacture that 
 the total production rose from 489,000 tons in '78 to 
 1,074,000 in '82. In another ten years even that output 
 was more than doubled; in '93 it was 3,162,000 tons, and 
 in '94 it was 3,617,000. The following table states con- 
 cisely the all-round triumph of recent years : 
 
 
 
 '86. 
 
 '91. 
 
 '92. 
 
 '93. 
 
 '94. '95. 
 
 Pig-iron 
 
 Half-finished 
 and Finished 
 Iron and Steel 
 
 tons. 
 3,529,000 
 
 3,496,000 
 
 tons. 
 4,641,000 
 
 5,064,000 
 
 tons. 
 4,937,000 
 
 5,131,000 
 
 tons. 
 4,986,000 
 
 5,387,000 
 
 tons. | tons. 
 5,380,000 5,788,000 
 
 5,825,000 
 
 1 Iron and Steel Institute Journal, '80 : " The Iron Industry of 
 Germany." 
 
 2 Stahl und Eisen, vol. xv, pp. 140 to 146. 
 
34 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 Thus we cannot (as in our own case we can) name any 
 year as a culmination of German prosperity. The historian 
 of English iron tells a marvellous tale of progress ; but he 
 must perforce, having reached a highest point, proceed to a 
 decline and fall. In Germany the history is still at the 
 first chapter. Yet '94 in Germany might very well serve 
 the annalist for the starting-place of a new section. For 
 . it was in that year that for the first time exports exceeded 
 imports : a statement true also of Belgium. 
 
 Odious Comparisons 
 
 Having considered amounts of production, let us com- 
 plete our survey, and get the picture into perspective, by 
 comparing amounts of trade. And, first, as between 
 England and Germany: In '91 we exported to Germany 
 31,839 tons of manufactured iron and steel; but Germany 
 (who, a few years before, depended very largely on our- 
 selves for her own consumption) sent us 109,958. Under 
 the general heading of iron, wrought and unwrought, the 
 returns of our German exports exhibit a fall from 374,234 
 tons in '90 to 297,510 in '95. It will be noted that these 
 figures are largely in excess of those in the preceding 
 batch. The reason is that by far the larger part of the ex- 
 portation under this heading consists of pig-iron. Now, 
 though it is satisfactory (in its way) to know that we send 
 large quantities of this product to Germany, that satisfac- 
 tion is horribly discounted when we regard pig-iron as we 
 must regard it as really raw material for the use and 
 profit of German manufacturers. In this connexion, too, it 
 should be noted that the small increases which, from time 
 to time, have taken place in the volume of our iron exports, 
 and which have somewhat made against the general reduc- 
 tion, have been mainly in this very branch, so that the 
 general figures are still worse in fact than they are on paper. 
 Again, our exports to Germany of telegraphic wires and 
 apparatus were valued at 72,709 in '90, 196,026 in '91, 
 
ODIOUS COMPARISONS 
 
 3S 
 
 and .21,638 in '95. And the figures of our imports from 
 Germany for these years are in inverse ratio. Of un- 
 enumerated iron manufactures, Germany supplied us with 
 219,841 cwt. in '90; and with 311,904 cwt. in '95. More- 
 over, the value of German steel and iron goods exported to 
 England in '94 was 24,400,000 marks, or 3,700,000 marks 
 over '93, a sufficiently formidable increase for a single 
 year ! The comparative production of the two countries 
 tells a similar tale. In '92 their several ore-productions 
 were about level at eleven millions and some odd tons ;: 
 which represented a drop on England's part of about seven 
 millions of tons since the early Eighties, but a rise on 
 Germany's of nearly four millions. Yet the average 
 number of tons worked per annum per man in Cleveland 
 is nearly three times the German average. A comparison 
 of the total production of pig-iron for '94 with that of a 
 decade earlier, gives these results : 
 
 
 
 '84. 
 
 '94. 
 
 England 
 
 Germany 
 
 tons. 
 7,528,966 
 3,465,000 
 
 tons. 
 7,364,745 
 5,380,000 
 
 The popular idea with respect to our Colonial possessions 
 is that they assist the prosperity of the Mother Country. 
 As matter of fact, they furnish a most convenient outlet 
 for German energy. Indeed, as regards iron and steel, 
 they are, with England herself, the best customers 
 the Germans have. At present the amount of their 
 exports is not nearly so great as that of England's ; 
 but their export trade is growing, and England's is de- 
 clining. Especially in respect of India is the position 
 serious : as witnesses the following table of exports from 
 
 1 This figure shows a drop of 11 per cent, on the preceding year; 
 when the amount produced was greater by 961,258 tons. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 
 
 MADE JN GERMANY 
 
 England and her chief rivals Belgium, that is, and Ger- 
 many for the last twelve years 1 : 
 
 Year. 
 
 From United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 From Belgium. 
 
 From Germany. 
 
 Iron. 
 
 Steel. 
 
 Iron. 
 
 Steel. 
 
 Iron. 
 
 Steel. 
 
 
 cwt. 
 
 cwt. 
 
 cwt. 
 
 cwt. 
 
 cwt. 
 
 cwt. 
 
 83-4 
 
 3,473,619 
 
 240,149 
 
 86,657 
 
 10,981 
 
 9,411 
 
 1,609 
 
 '84-5 
 
 3,423,559 
 
 263,433 
 
 165.4SS 
 
 24,287 
 
 5,209 
 
 1,400 
 
 '85-6 
 
 3,322,511 
 
 255,871 
 
 152,069 
 
 20,629 
 
 4,146 
 
 1,850 
 
 '86-7 
 
 3,102,856 
 
 327,744 
 
 162,043 
 
 19,240 
 
 3,222 
 
 2,154 
 
 '87-8 
 
 4,077,292 
 
 372, S24 
 
 188,584 
 
 42,913 
 
 8,148 
 
 3,283 
 
 '88-0 
 
 3,715,081 
 
 456,550 
 
 262,436 
 
 77.976 
 
 11.92S 
 
 7,063 
 
 '89-90 
 
 2,983,080 
 
 385,916 
 
 606,544 
 
 66,375 
 
 5,525 
 
 16,099 
 
 '90-1 
 
 3,306,381 
 
 462,671 
 
 536,076 
 
 164,874 
 
 13,134 
 
 76,235 
 
 '91-2 
 
 2,859,753 
 
 347,816 
 
 776,328 
 
 301,573 
 
 28,559 
 
 123,0S6 
 
 '92-3 
 
 2,382,578 
 
 270,751 
 
 1,153,411 
 
 283,817 
 
 34,727 
 
 66,712 
 
 '93-4 
 
 2,320,839 
 
 420,158 
 
 1,223,332 
 
 518.395 
 
 102,334 
 
 100,188 
 
 '94-5 
 
 1,956,721 
 
 369,753 
 
 1,176,179 
 
 448,091 
 
 75,264 
 
 84,083 
 
 It is, in truth, the wretchedest reading ; from supplying 
 India with 98 per cent, of her iron and 95 per cent, of her 
 steel in '83-4, in '94-5 we had declined to 61 per cent, of 
 her iron and 41 per cent, of her steel. Our actual decline 
 has been nearly 50 per cent, in iron, against Belgium's 
 increase of 1,257 per cent, and Germany's of nearly 700 per 
 cent. ! In steel we are only supplying about half as much 
 again in the last year of the period as in the first ; but 
 Belgium is sending forty times and Germany over fifty 
 times as much. This amazing business is partly explained 
 by the fact (vouched for by Mr. Jeremiah Lyon) that " the 
 P. and O. Company charges 15s. 9d. per ton for carrying 
 iron from London to Bombay," and "that it sends its 
 steamers to load in Antwerp, and will bring iron from 
 there to London, and thence to Bombay and Calcutta for 
 10s. per ton." Yet the English Government subsidises the 
 P. and O. Company to the tune of 1,000 a day ! 2 
 
 The amount of German iron and steel exported to Aus- 
 
 1 Iron and Coal True . 29th November, '95. 
 
 -Of late, I understand, a reduction has been made in the freight 
 of English iron and steel. 
 
ODIOUS COMPARISONS 
 
 37 
 
 tralia was 24,000 tons in '93 ; a year later it had risen to 
 about 42,000. In painful contrast with this is the state- 
 ment for England. Despite the recent development of 
 West Australia, where we might naturally expect a rise 
 even in English goods, the returns attest a fall from 19,861 
 tons in '90 to 6,958 tons in '94. In the same period South 
 Australia shows a shrinkage from 38,139 to 24,408 tons ; 
 Victoria, one from 108,171 to 46,898 tons; New South 
 Wales, one from 93,857 to 58,115 tons; while in Queens- 
 land the drop is actually from 51,184 to 18,073 tons ! 
 Tasmania, too, has deserted in like wise; she took 5,916 
 tons in '90 and only 1,345 in '94. To go to another part 
 of the world, we find Canada taking (roughly) 50 per cent, 
 more of German goods and of English nearly 50 per cent, 
 less in '94 than she took in '93. Thus, in our own indus- 
 trial preserves the Germans are poaching the very game it 
 cost us so much labour and money and blood to stock and 
 rear. 
 
 Beaten at home and in our home over-seas, it is not 
 likely that we should be holding our ground in foreign 
 countries. Nor are we : as one or two examples will suffice 
 to prove. Russia rs the most conspicuous of all. In the 
 first of these papers I referred to the tremendous fillip 
 which the Russo-German Tariff Treaty of '94 gave to the 
 German export trade to Russia. In no branch of commerce 
 is this expansion more in evidence than in iron and 
 steel : 
 
 Exports for the Six Months Ending June 30th. 
 
 
 '95. 
 
 '94. 
 
 '93. 
 
 
 Angle iron 
 
 Bar iron 
 
 Plates ... 
 
 Ordinary iron goods . . 
 
 Total 
 
 double cwts. 
 
 139,791 
 
 438,450 
 
 196,837 
 
 66,943 
 
 double cwts. 
 
 87,708 
 297,554 
 108,054 
 
 49,442 
 
 double cwts. 
 
 61,671 
 
 197,991 
 
 84,315 
 
 47,085 
 
 842,021 
 
 542,758 
 
 391,062 
 
38 
 
 MADE IN GEMMA NY 
 
 As a rough contrast, here is a table showing England's ex- 
 ports to Russia for the same three years (the 1 2 months) : 
 
 
 '95. 
 
 '94. 
 
 
 
 
 Bar, angle, bolt, and rod 
 
 Railroad iron 
 
 Hoop, sheet and plate 
 
 Tin plate and sheet 
 
 tons. 
 
 2,853 
 14,325 
 
 3,439 
 29,926 
 
 tons. 
 3,555 
 3,634 
 8,095 
 23,906 
 
 tons. 
 
 2,469 
 19,932 
 
 6,059 
 30,527 
 
 The Italians, also 'tis the same with them. Exported 
 German iron has mounted by regular increments from 
 50,530 tons in '90 to 89,296 in '95 ; exported English iron, 
 wrought and unwrought, has fluctuated, but attests a fall 
 from 160,989 tons in '90, the highest year, to 144,189 in 
 '94. 1 And, having got thus far, I shall wind up this 
 section with a table of five years' aggregate exports and 
 imports, in iron and steel : 
 
 Germany. 
 
 Year. 
 
 Imports. 
 
 t 
 Exports. 
 
 
 tons. 
 
 tons. 
 
 '90 
 
 491,592 
 
 957,693 
 
 '91 
 
 331,503 
 
 1,16(5,488 
 
 '92 
 
 278,457 
 
 1,133,676 
 
 '93 
 
 286,631 
 
 1,213,048 
 
 '94 
 
 270,315 
 
 1,439,585 
 
 England. 
 
 Year. 
 
 Imports. 
 
 Exports. 
 
 
 tons. 
 
 tons. 
 
 '90 
 
 315,674 
 
 2,706,260 
 
 '91 
 
 306,506 
 
 2,289,023 
 
 '92 
 
 294,279 
 
 1,865,738 
 
 '93 
 
 276,524 
 
 1,897,758 
 
 '94 
 
 287,604 
 
 1,735,757 
 
 1 '95 shows an increase over '94 of nearly 18,000 tons of pig-iron 
 but in manufactured iron there is either a very slight increase, or an 
 actual decrease, 
 50 per cent. 
 
 -in the case of hoops, sheets and plates, a decrease of 
 
BELATED ENQUIRIES 39 
 
 Thus, from taking near 50 per cent, more imports than 
 ourselves in '90, the Germans have gone on producing till 
 their figures stand beneath our own ; while in exports they 
 have climbed from about a third of our total in '90 to a 
 place not far short of that total in '94. 
 
 Belated Enquiries 
 
 At the beginning of this chapter I referred to " the 
 fatuous reports of the British Iron Trade Association." I 
 apologise to the gentlemen who manage the affairs of that 
 body if my language was unduly severe. In truth, I cannot 
 think it was. Nor, to judge by late events, would the 
 members of the Association themselves. 
 
 The proverb about locking the stable-door after the 
 steed is stolen is certainly a cliche; but in the present 
 instance it has so close an application that 'tis irresistible. 
 The old reports of the British Iron Trade Association leave 
 the student with a general impression that, in so far as 
 the British Iron and Steel Trades were concerned, every- 
 thing was for the best in a best of all possible worlds. 
 True, their statistics often told an unflattering tale to 
 those that had brains to heed ; but the meaning of the 
 said statistics scarce appears to have been apprehended. 
 At any rate, the compilers of these tables, with the com- 
 mentary thereon, are now and again responsible for sen- 
 tences like this : " The returns appear to show that our 
 machine factories are doing quite as well as our Iron and 
 Steel works proper in the way of holding their own against 
 foreign competition." 1 To bear in mind some figures I 
 have given is to recognise that remarks of this character 
 convict themselves of inappropriateness. There are who 
 say that figures never lie ; there are also who prefer the 
 cynical division of " lies, damned lies, and statistics " : the 
 truth being that the value of statistics (given their accu- 
 
 1 Report of British Iron Trade Association for '90, p. 52. 
 
40 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 racy) depends upon (1) their completeness, and (2) the 
 breadth of view with which they are handled. This latter 
 quality entered into the mental processes of the Associa- 
 tion report-writers somewhat late in the day. Not until 
 '94 did those who direct the Association's affairs awake to 
 the fact that something was wrong. A committee was 
 appointed to investigate the question of foreign competi- 
 tion, and in April, '95, a report was addressed to the Board 
 of Management which, despite some creditable efforts to 
 take a cheerful view of the situation, revealed the fact 
 that England's supremacy in iron and steel was a thing 
 of the past. The publication of this report was followed 
 by an enquiry sur place : a delegation of masters and 
 tradesmen being sent to Germany and Belgium to in- 
 vestigate. It came home bearing its sheaves (of evil 
 tidings) with it. It was as well that the investigation 
 should be held ; but it would have profited infinitely more 
 had it been held some ten or fifteen years before. Its 
 report may be useful even now in checking us on our 
 downward course ; but it will be useful mainly useful, 
 perhaps as an object-lesson to the conductors of other 
 industries (also threatened by the foreigner), who may 
 perchance take heed in time, and lock their stables while 
 there is still something inside them. 
 
 German Advantages 
 
 I do not purpose now to discuss the general causes of 
 German success and English failure : but in the case of 
 special causes affecting a particular trade it is as well to 
 allude to them by the way. In the case of Iron and Steel 
 such special causes are in operation. Chief among them is 
 the lower cost of production. 
 
 It must not, however, be inferred as English people are 
 far too ready to infer that this means lower wages. That 
 explanation has long been worn threadbare : it is an easy 
 
GERMAN ADVANTAGES 41 
 
 disposition of the question, and saves the manufacturer 
 from the exercise of that searching of heart as to his own 
 shortcomings, which is as precious in commerce as in 
 morals ; at the same time that it serves as a clinching 
 argument against any application for better pay on the 
 part of his servants. But it has the demerit of being 
 founded for the most part on a delusion. Thus, it was found 
 by the delegates of British Iron that for loading-plates 
 German mechanics are paid at the rate of a franc per ton, 
 whereas the Middlesborough man gets only 5|d. to 7d. 
 An Englishman employed at certain ironworks in Ger- 
 many, who had once been at Darlington and Middles- 
 borough, and was therefore fitted to compare, discoursed 
 the delegates thus : " Undoubtedly our men are better 
 off than the men in England. We pay, generally speaking, 
 higher wages. You have some few men who get higher 
 wages than any men in our works; but over the whole 
 of the men we get higher wages than you pay. That is 
 an absolute fact." This is emphatic ; but it is fortified 
 by the observations of such Englishmen interested in the 
 trade as have travelled the Continent in a note-taking 
 spirit. Further, the official statistics of wages in Germany 
 may be cited in confirmation. These show not only that 
 the German worker's income averages very fairly with the 
 English ditto's, but that the German's wages are on a 
 pretty steady upward grade : which explains the signs of 
 a higher standard of living now noticeable among the 
 German people. I am speaking more particularly of the 
 manufacture of finished iron and steel ; miners and workers 
 in the pig-iron furnaces are not so well paid, and it may be 
 that their wages will not bear favourable comparison with 
 Englishmen's for similar work. It is, nevertheless, a great 
 mistake to suppose that the cheaper pig-iron to which the 
 Germans now have access, is inexpensive solely by reason 
 of low wages. The better explanation is to be found in 
 the increased productivity of the German furnaces. " Ten 
 
42 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 or twelve years ago," says Herr Weinlig, " a daily turn-out 
 of 60 to 70 tons of forge-pig iron or 50 tons of Spiegeleisen 
 was considered large; but 150 to 170 tons of best quality 
 forge-pig iron, 100 to 120 tons of Spiegeleisen, &c, are now 
 quite common." J Here is a most excellent reason for the 
 cheapening of German pig-iron. Note the progressive pro- 
 ductivity of the English furnaces, and the argument will 
 be complete. In '81 our annual output averaged 15,176 
 tons per furnace, giving an advantage over the Germans 
 of 3,567 tons per furnace. By '93 we, too, had advanced 
 towards perfection ; but only to the extent of 21,400 tons 
 of annual output. This leaves us 3,041 tons behind our 
 rivals. And yet the English manufacturer goes on his fine, 
 old crusted way and seeks to dissemble his stupor, and his 
 narrow and dogged aloofness from improved methods, in 
 the miserable excuse of " German cheap labour." 
 
 There are other reasons for German cheap production, 
 i They don't waste their material in the prodigal fashion 
 which obtains this side of the North Sea. When the 
 British Iron delegates visited a certain plate mill, they 
 found that the arrangements involved 15 per cent, less 
 waste "practically no waste" was one delegate's de- 
 scription. He significantly added: "It would be abso- 
 lutely impossible to produce sheets in such a quantity, and 
 of such an appearance, with the appliances we have at our 
 disposal." Another commissioner remarked : " As a 
 practical man I must admit that I never saw anything 
 like it, and could not have believed it possible unless 
 I had seen it with my own eyes." This Practical Man 
 admitted also that " there is a danger to the Midland 
 District unless we can, by some means, increase our 
 output, develop our machinery, and bring our sheets to 
 greater perfection." The Practical Man is right : there is 
 a considerable " danger." He would have been justified in 
 the use of a stronger word. Another cause of comparative 
 1 Stahl und Eisen, vol. xv., p. 140. 
 
GERMAN ADVANTAGES 43 
 
 cheapness of production is the lower railway rate which 
 iron has to pay. Railway rates are a fluctuating quantity 
 just now, both in this country jlnd on the Continent ; but 
 analyses show them to be very much lower in Germany, as 
 well as Belgium and Sweden, than they are in England. 
 The figures are hopelessly complicated for purposes of 
 comparison ; but there is little danger of exaggeration in 
 saying that on the Continent they do not pay for railway 
 carriage half what is charged in England. It is worth 
 noting that German railways are _ejpeciaJQy._nmiigra^e_in 
 their rates to shipping ports.. Account must also be taken 
 of the Dephosphorizing inventions already referred to, 
 which came into use early in the Eighties. Between '78 
 and '80 the Germans had to buy ore for pig-iron at prices 
 ranging from 22s. for common forge to 38s. 6d. for 
 Bessemer ; but the ore cost of pig of qualities suitable for 
 making wrought iron or basic Bessemer steel is probably 
 at the present time not more than from 15s. to 20s. per 
 ton. Then, as regards the two export trades, the staunchest 
 Free-Trader cannot afford to overlook the advantages of 
 the German Protective System. English iron and steel, on 
 entering Germany, are handicapped with a duty varying 
 in amount, but reaching to over half-a-crown a hundred- 
 weight for tin plates. This makes it very difficult for us 
 to compete with home-made metals. It likewise enables 
 the German to raise his prices to his compatriots, and 
 screw such a profit from them that he can afford a big 
 reduction on his export prices, so that he cuts at his 
 English rival in two directions. The duty makes our 
 goods too dear to sell in Germany, at the same time that 
 it makes German goods so cheap in the world-market that 
 we are being undersold therein and ousted therefrom. 
 The cheap export manufacture also enables the Germans 
 to keep their works fully employed; and this means a 
 great saving in standing charges. Moreover, to pass from 
 cheaper production and distribution, the method of con- 
 
 MIl/iTDOiTV 
 
44 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 ducting business in many English houses is as rigid as 
 their own cast iron, which makes it difficult for the 
 English patriot to keep patience with the English 
 manufacturer. Here is an excerpt from the correspond- 
 ence columns of a trade journal x : 
 
 Sir, Some time ago I had occasion to place an order for thin 
 wrought-iron sheets. In answer to my enquiry one firm wrote : " We 
 regret the specification would not suit us" ; another, "We regret it 
 does not suit us to quote for black sheets at present " ; and other 
 makers in the same strain. 
 
 Last month I required some steel sheets, and received almost 
 identical replies. 
 
 My friends are now putting down a plant abroad for rolling their 
 own meanwhile the sheets they require are 
 
 Made in Germany. 
 
 Brussels, December 9. 
 
 Surely this letter " speaks for itself " 1 
 
 In Review 
 
 It is but too clear, then, that on all hands England's 
 industrial supremacy is tottering to its fall, and that this 
 result is largely German work. But in no branch of our 
 commerce is an approaching downfall so patent as in Iron 
 and Steel. Our production of iron-ore is less than it was ; 
 and so is our make of pig-iron. Our manufactures of iron 
 are dwindling and our manufactures of steel are not 
 increasing in a compensating ratio. And so well have our 
 rivals Germany in particular taken advantage of our 
 discoveries and of our experiments, that it is not at all 
 fantastical to picture England as the nursery of the 
 Continental iron and steel trades. 
 
 Many English furnaces are damped down; many 
 English works are idle, or almost idle, even in " good 
 times," while the foreigner, even through bad times, goes on 
 increasing his output. English manufacturers are found 
 working often with scarce a bare margin of profit, often at 
 a dead loss ; while German firms are earning handsome 
 1 Ironmongery 14th December, '95. 
 
IN REVIEW 45 
 
 dividends. (In one establishment a British Iron Trade 
 delegate reported the payment of a dividend varying in the 
 past eighteen years from 25 to 30 per cent.) Yet until the 
 other day the English Iron Trade sealed its eyes to the 
 damning facts with a cheerful pertinacity which the 
 ostrich of fable might have envied. Now that it is re- 
 solved to view the situation, it is filled with amazement 
 and alarm. One Association delegate, after a visit to one 
 of the German works, remarks, with emphasis : "I was 
 astounded." And a colleague concludes his observations 
 with this pregnant and hopeful confession : " We shall 
 have to begin and learn again." A fervent Amen to that ! 
 must be the response of every well-wisher to England's 
 prosperity. To sit at the feet of those who learned their 
 trade from us may be humiliating, but it is vitally 
 necessary in the present posture of affairs. 
 
 Let us return, in conclusion, to the prophetic words of 
 Dr. Wedding (of Berlin) : " You, our English visitors, 
 will also acknowledge, as soon as you have learned to 
 know our iron industry, that .... the Germans have 
 known how with advantage to adapt to their local circum- 
 stances that which they received from you, and to develop 
 it in a way peculiar to themselves." But why didn't we 
 " learn to know " their iron industry sooner 1 The de- 
 velopment might not then have been " in a way peculiar to 
 themselves." 
 
Ill 
 
 SHIPS, HARDWARE, AND MACHINES 
 
 The dry-rot in English Iron and Steel has spread though 
 not, as yet, to quite so destructive a degree to what are 
 known as the Allied Trades (" Daughter Trades " would 
 be perhaps the better term). The furnaces and the 
 foundries are experiencing the chief effect of German 
 competition ; but the shipyard, the machine-shop, and the 
 hardware and cutlery trades are also menaced from the 
 same quarter. My classification in this chapter is somewhat 
 heterogeneous ; and if it strike the reader as bewildering 
 that I include an ironclad in the same category as a pocket- 
 knife, I can only adduce the plea of community in origin and 
 likeness in certain characteristics. The mass of statistics 
 compiled for iron and steel are lacking in respect of the 
 Allied Trades, and the extent and nature of foreign 
 encroachment are therefore less apparent to the student. 
 But though a larger amount of tabulated information is 
 greatly desiderated, there are figures enough in official 
 export returns, Consular Reports, and the like, to excite 
 the gravest uneasiness regarding the future of English 
 hardware, whether it take the form of pocket-knives or 
 the form of ships of the line. 
 
SHIPS 47 
 
 Correspondent to the universal belief in our naval 
 supremacy is the belief, also universal, in our supremacy 
 as shipbuilders. It is a belief which is justified by facts : 
 England is actually at the head of the trade. But even 
 here the time qualification is necessary, for her premiership 
 is by no means assured ; and even here a national craft is 
 on the black list too. In '83 the total tonnage built in the 
 United Kingdom was 892,216 tons ; in '93 it reached only 
 to 584,674 ; in '94, 'tis true, it rose to 669,492, but this is 
 much below the total even of '92, which was 801,548. 
 These are the figures as given by the Board of Trade. 
 Lloyd's for '95 are differently computed: they put the 
 total tonnage of ships (inclusive of warships) launched at 
 both Government and private yards at 1,247,189 tons 
 an increase of 20,000 tons on '94. But the special naval 
 output of last year must obviously be subtracted; when 
 you get a decrease on the year of over 95,000 tons. All these 
 figures include vessels built for foreigners, as well as those 
 for home and the colonies. The year in which we built 
 most vessels for other nations was '89, when we supplied 
 them with 183,224 tons. The four following years showed 
 a progressive decrease, getting down as low as 89,386 tons 
 in '93, and though '94 showed an increase to 94,876 tons, 
 the upward movement was trifling compared with the 
 successive decreases of the previous years. Still more 
 remarkable is the drop in our supply of foreign warships 
 from 12,877 tons in 74 to 2,483 tons in '94. These figures 
 are unsatisfactory from any and every point of view ; but 
 they would not perhaps be alarming were it not for the fact 
 that at least one other country is steadily increasing her 
 output of ships : that country, of course, being Germany. 
 
 For centuries the German shipyards were a matter of 
 small importance ; but of late the German nation has 
 looked upon the clanging yards that line the shores of 
 
48 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 Tyne and Clyde and Lagan, and has said unto herself, 
 " Why not % " Now, when the German takes an industrial 
 longing badly, it is usually safe to conclude that he is well 
 on the road to its fulfilment ; and though shipbuilding was 
 long regarded as one of the industries (almost, alas ! the 
 only one) in which the German had no chance, he has none 
 the less girded himself for a trial of strength in it. To 
 give the industry a helping hand, a law was passed as 
 
 d far back as '85, enjoining that materials destined for the 
 construction, the repairing, and the outfitting of seagoing 
 vessels, inclusive of " gear " (as rigging, sails, compasses, 
 cannon, pumps, handspikes, boats, and the like), should be 
 admitted duty free. In '94 the mercantile navy was 
 
 ^ increased by seventy-one bottoms, only fifteen of which 
 were built in the United Kingdom, but fifty-four were built 
 at home. At Stettin there is a shipyard known as the Vulcan 
 Works : an enterprise so formidable that ('tis said) it is 
 scarce to be surpassed in any part of the British Isles. With 
 the Vulcan Works and with the Schichau Yard at Dantzig 
 the North German Lloyd was moved to place an order for 
 the building of two steamships, bigger, it is stated, than 
 anything afloat, and representing a capital of some 
 .950,000. When the Kaiser heard of this piece of practical 
 patriotism he at once despatched a " wire " of congratula- 
 tion and delight; and seeing that the Germans (that is, 
 those of them who are not Social Democrats) love their 
 Kaiser, and are always ready to fall into line with his 
 telegrams, this message of his may be held to have had its 
 influence on the German shipowner. This is of peculiar 
 importance, in view of the great increase in German 
 shipping now in progress. Here patriotism goes hand in 
 hand with economy ; for ships are built more cheaply in 
 Germany than with us. It is therefore not surprising to 
 find that the Kaiser's wish is already in process of 
 realisation ; so that, as Her Majesty's Consul-General at 
 Hamburg puts it, the German shipyards are now receiving 
 
SHIPS 49 
 
 Sfc many orders for merchantmen that of the last to come 
 in tnvv have been able to accept only a few. Those in hand 
 in '95 extend to '97, so that some firms are compelled to ask 
 for long terms of delivery, while others have ceased from 
 asking new commissions. (Concurrent with this intelligence 
 was an announcement referring to the north-west of 
 England in The Iron and Coal Trade Review, that " in the 
 shipbuilding department there is somewhat less activity 
 than of late, new orders being wanted.") So great, in 
 fact, is the German demand for ships, so badly choked are 
 the local sources of supply, that at last unhappy Britain 
 gets a look in. Scenting business from afar, the German 
 shipowners are exigent in their requirements. Some 
 decline to push patriotism to the extent of enduring that 
 delay (of fourteen months) which application to the home- 
 yards means ; so they send to us in England (here " new 
 orders" are " being wanted "), who are plaintively offering 
 to deliver in six months. It is thus that Messrs. G. Connell 
 and Co., of Scotstown, got the order for the two (out of 
 three) new steamers wanted for the Kosmos Line ; thus 
 that Messrs. Harland and Wolff, of Belfast, that for the 
 new sister-ship to the Normannia. And England, once the 
 shipbuilder of the world, is glad and thankful to get the 
 German's leavings ! This glut in the German yards is due 
 to the rush upwards in German trade : they were simply 
 not prepared for so magnificent a short cut to prosperity. 
 But it will not take them long to accommodate themselves 
 to their new circumstances. The enforced rejection of big 
 orders must have gone sorely to the German heart, and the 
 German industrial genius will mighty soon find a way to 
 prevent any such wicked waste of opportunity in the 
 future. It will be very unlike the Germans very unlike 
 any body of capable business men if the existing incapacity 
 of their yards be not converted into something very 
 different ; and then there will not even be their leavings 
 for us. Moreover, the ambition of Germany does not stop 
 
 E 
 
50 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 at the satisfaction of her own shipowners : she purposes 
 also to build for the world. She has an eye (and a keen 
 one) on every possible market, and the late lock-out, in 
 British yards has excited the liveliest interest among her 
 shipwrights. Wherever there is the chance of a foreign 
 order, that order has been eagerly sought ; so that, despite 
 the inadequacy of her yards, it is reported that she has already 
 succeeded in roping in the Japanese for a number of iron- 
 clads long regarded as safe for our own shipyards. It is also 
 affirmed that part of the ten millions sterling which China, 
 bent on being a naval power, was prepared to spend on 
 Tyneside, will go to Dantzig and Stettin. And now the 
 Norwegian Government has ordered a couple of ironclads of 
 the same determined rival. I have already referred to the 
 relative cheapness of the German ship ; 1 but the difference in 
 price between German and English work is not yet sufficient 
 to satisfy the Germans themselves. A committee of iron and 
 steel masters, which sat at Hanover of late, has drawn up 
 a set of resolutions calling on the German Government to 
 lower the railway rates on all material used in German 
 yards. The acceptance cannot but prove of invaluable service 
 to the industry : the more especially as there is not the faintest 
 chance of our being able to equalise matters by getting a 
 like concession from the English lines. These facts and 
 considerations, which are or should be in the minds of 
 English shipbuilders, show yet more plainly the criminal 
 fatuousness of deliberately driving trade away (as in the 
 recent lock-out) at a time when much was in prospect of 
 retrieval. Trade is elusive enough, anyway : when it is 
 wantonly sent elsewhere, it is like to be coy about returning. 
 
 1 A flagrant instance came to light some little time back, when the 
 Commissioners of the River Wear constructed a 600-ton sand pump 
 hopper. The contract was given to a foreign firm, whose tender was 
 said to be 1, 100 below the lowest from an English yard. And yet we 
 boast of possessing the cheapest shipbuilding material in the world. 
 
SHIPPING 51 
 
 Shipping 
 
 To discuss shipping is to diverge from the subject-matter 
 of this chapter, yet the connection between the building 
 and sailing of ships is, I think, sufficiently close to excuse 
 a digression. Great as is England's fame as premier ship- 
 builder of the world, her fame as ocean-carrier is still 
 greater. Yet at this point, also, the ubiquitous German 
 is starting into rivalry. It need not be said that as yet 
 he is a long way behind. But there is need to say, and 
 that with emphasis, that he has made such headway that 
 he is already second in steam tonnage to ourselves alone. 1 
 In '70 the total merchant tonnage of the German Empire 
 was 982,355 tons ; in '80 it was 1,181,525; in '90 it was 
 1,433,413 3 by '93 it had got to 1,522,058 ; and though full 
 figures for a later period are not available at the time of 
 writing, it has been ascertained that this total was increased 
 by 144,588 tons in '94. A fairly big allowance may be 
 made for wrecks and vessels gone into disuse ; but even so, 
 it is safe to assert that Germany's rate of progress has 
 been extremely satisfactory (to herself), while there are 
 everywhere signs that it has been at the least maintained 
 since '94. In an estimate made of her effective tonnage 
 in '93 and '94 the figures are respectively 4,214,385 and 
 4,573,526 tons : which represents an increase of 8 to 9 per 
 cent. (England's ratio in the same period was only about 
 3 \ per cent.) The present year ('96) is to witness a great 
 nautical Exhibition at Kiel, arranged for the purpose of 
 showing " the world that German advance in naval matters 
 is as rapid as in most other industries." 2 
 
 Scarce any item of news is more frequent in the Consular 
 Reports of recent years than that of the establishment of 
 new, the development of existing, German lines. Within 
 
 1 Foreign Office Report, Annual Series, No. 1432. 
 a Engineering, 6th December, '95. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 five years the fleet of Hamburg liners has been doubled ; 
 and this record tallies with that of other commercial 
 operations. For example, Germany is now exploiting 
 with peculiar eagerness the South American republics ; 
 and at once you note the establishment of a specially good 
 service to South America. In like manner a writer in the 
 Deutsches Handels Archiv advocates a more frequent service 
 between Germany and the German South- West African 
 Protectorate in connection with the distribution of German 
 goods. This watchfulness for new markets, this prompt 
 seizure of new markets so soon as they are discovered, are 
 proof that Germany means business in the shipping as in 
 other trades, and will have to be reckoned with as a 
 serious rival. Already, indeed, the German has encroached 
 on what might fairly have been regarded as an English 
 preserve : I mean, the European trade with our Posses- 
 sions. Two German lines are plying between Hamburg 
 and Calcutta, each with two departures monthly, which 
 gives a regular weekly service. 1 
 
 In the last century England's interest in her shipping 
 was so great that she prohibited imports from Asia, Africa, 
 and America except in English bottoms. Now the increase 
 in foreign ships is scarce deemed worth a perfunctory com- 
 ment in her public Press. And meanwhile the grant-in- 
 aid is lavishly employed by the German Government (see, 
 for instance, the estimates of the Empire for '95-'96) : 
 
 "Item 11. Subvention to German 
 
 postal lines to East Asia 
 and Australia ... ... 204,500 
 
 " Item 12. Ditto with East Africa. . . 45,000 " j 
 
 so that it is not at all astonishing to read 2 that " large 
 new (German) ships have been placed on the lines to both 
 the east and west coasts of South America, Africa, East 
 Asia, and Australia, and the Hamburg- American Line is 
 
 1 Foreign Office Report, '94, Annual Series, No. 1432. 
 
 2 Foreign Office Report, '95, Annual Series, No. 1623. 
 
CUTLERY 53 
 
 running fine steamships of 7,000 to 8,000 tons each " ; 
 nor to learn that in one year the net earnings of the 
 German East African Line have mounted from 34,716 to 
 39,875 10$. Meanwhile the circulars of English com- 
 panies set forth complaints like this : " Since May 1st 
 the shipping trade has remained in a very depressed state, 
 and we cannot yet report any general improvement." 1 
 
 Cutlery 
 
 Let us now revert to my avowed subject. 
 
 In the cutlery trades an important and essentially 
 English branch of English industry the difficulty in ob- 
 taining statistics is exemplified with peculiar force. The 
 Sheffield cutler hath a suspicious nature, with a rooted 
 aversion from the collection of figures relating to his 
 business. Accurate tables of production and sale are not, 
 therefore, to be had ; nor is much light to be got from the 
 Government Export Returns, where razors, slop-pails, hair- 
 pins, lamps, brass bedsteads, with a multitude of other and 
 various articles, are lumped together with catholic im- 
 partiality under the generic heading " Hardwares and 
 Cutlery." Yet there are signs and to spare that the 
 German is making himself felt in Hallamshire as else- 
 where. He got a useful introduction to the market 
 with the hollow-ground razor, and he sedulously im- 
 proved the advantage then and thus secured. Unfortu- 
 nately for his commercial good name, his improvement of 
 opportunities has not always been pursued with a due re- 
 gard for commercial morality. The supreme merit of 
 Sheffield steel is household knowledge in the remotest 
 quarters of the earth ; and that buyers may be assured 
 that they are getting what they ask, and can identify the 
 firm which sells, the goods are mostly branded with special 
 trade-marks (as the famous star and cross of Joseph Rodgers 
 
 1 Engineering, 6th December, '95. 
 
54 \DE IN GERMANY 
 
 and Son). Here was an opening for the German genius : 
 and the world now glitters with German cutlery adorned 
 with elegant suggestions (reproductions even) of the best 
 praised Sheffield marks. Let me cite as a clamant and 
 scandalous example, the Rodgers cutlery aforesaid. The 
 makes of this firm have so exalted a reputation all over 
 the globe that the Customs of more than one State have 
 put them in a special category in their scale of import 
 duties. Need I add that in Germany this brand has been 
 steadily marked down for fraudulent trade? To say 
 nothing of direct imitations (and, considering that the 
 firm has been spending 1,000 a year in fighting trade- 
 mark thieves, we may assume that these are pretty exten- 
 sive) ingenious devices of a more indirect kind exist in 
 shoals to testify to the German cutler's wit. To give an 
 instance of the German commercial imagination : one firm 
 has invented (for British India) a pretty trade-mark a 
 trade-mark figuring a pair of crossed dumb-bells and a 
 wheel. It sounds original ; but it looks so remarkably 
 like the cross and star of the Sheffield house that pur- 
 chasers have bought large quantities wherever it is shown, 
 under the agreeable delusion that they were stocking their 
 houses with the finest Sheffield steel. 1 Other Germans 
 have developed a taste for pseudonyms; and cutlery of 
 their make may be met with bearing the legends, 
 " Rudgens," " Rottgens," and the like, designed (I fear) 
 " with intent to deceive " unwary customers in Oriental 
 and other kinds, where the niceties of European orthography 
 are not known. Franker in thievery is a certain firm of 
 sickle makers, which set itself to compete with a firm in 
 the Sheffield district. The Sheffield firm was doing a very 
 large business with Chili. The sickles, which were first 
 
 1 The Higli Court of Saxony has discountenanced this particular 
 expression of the German genius ; but the penalty imposed (15) is ;i 
 
 mild deterrent. The robber gravely contended that the Hindoo's 
 " highly developed sense for pictorial art" made confusion on his part 
 'inconceivable.", 
 
CUTLERY 55 
 
 quality, were stamped with an L.O. brand. The German 
 firm soon found that "L.O." was a highly suitable mark ; 
 cargoes of L.O. sickles were shipped to Chili from German 
 ports ; they were sold there at a low figure ; and now that 
 Sheffield firm has lost its trade. 
 
 The commercial ability of the German cutler is further 
 shown in his choice of goods for fraudulent marking. 
 When he turns out good work, he subscribes to the dogma 
 which proclaims the superior policy of honest dealing. It 
 is when the stuff he produces is of the worst that its pro- 
 gress in the market is helped with English marks. So is 
 Sheffield the victim of a double wrong : first, her good 
 name is stolen ; and next, it is ruined by being affixed to 
 the nastiest cheap-German wares. In these circumstances 
 it is not surprising that the Sheffield traders, unlike their 
 colleagues in some other branches of commerce, should have 
 taken unto their affections the Merchandise Marks Act. 
 This Act, however, is not a universal safeguard ; in the 
 Indian case I have just mentioned the German imitations 
 were duly stamped " Made in Germany," but as the average 
 Hindoo's acquaintance with European letters is no more 
 intimate than the average European's acquaintance with 
 the Sanskrit alphabet, the words were not exactly an 
 effective protection. 
 
 The German method of pushing business makes a pretty 
 story. Unhappily that story lacks a moral. Retribution 
 has yet to overtake the fraudulent. In the present they 
 prosper exceedingly. A couple of instances will help to 
 bring the flourishing character of the trade before my 
 readers' minds in a concrete shape. In '93 Austria and 
 Germany between them exported to Servia cutlery and 
 tools to the value of 3,796, whereof 1,296 went to the 
 credit of Germany. In that year the export .of British 
 cutlery to Servia was not worth a ten-pound note. Now, 
 the contiguity of Austria sufficiently accounts for the 
 magnitude of her export ; but in view of the facts, that in 
 
56 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 '36 Lord Palmer ston sent a British Consul to Servia for 
 the purpose of encouraging commercial relations, and that 
 England is not much farther off than Germany, but is as 
 easily reached as Germany by sea, the figures of the two 
 countries stand in startling contrast. An effective expla- 
 nation of the phenomenon is furnished by the English 
 Consul at Belgrade in his report on Servian trade in '94 : 1 
 
 The Servian purchaser is resolutely conservative in adhering to 
 traditions of shape and pattern, for which indeed he cares more than 
 lie does for quality ; the kitchen knife, for instance, is an important 
 article with which the Serb is accustomed to chop bones and meat ; 
 the blade must therefore be especially broad at its insertion into the 
 the handle, in order that the holder's knuckles may escape abrasion. 
 The German manufacturer yields to this whim, and gives the blade 
 the required shape, a concession which British manufacturers have 
 hitherto refused. The result is the triumph of a German instrument, 
 of which the blade turns on bone, over an English knife of about 
 equal price but far superior temper. It is due to the German, 
 however, to remark that he spares no trouble to give a proper finish to 
 the article by carrying the metal of the haft quite through the bone 
 or ivory handle to which he rivets it, whilst the English haft goes in 
 a part of the way only, and works quickly loose. The question of 
 pattern is equally decisive as regards other tools. 
 
 My second example is from Russia. In '89 Germany 
 exported to that country cutlery to the value of 21,000r. ; 
 three years later her export was worth 67,677r. : all this 
 before the reduction in the duty made by the Russo- 
 German Tariff Treaty, the operation of which is sending 
 up the trade enormously ! Contrast, now, this prosperity 
 with what is virtually our decadence. As I have said, Board 
 of Trade returns of cutlery exports are imbedded in a 
 category which comprises many other articles; but 
 statistics are compiled by other Governments, and they cast 
 a cheerless ray upon the gloom. The authorities at 
 Washington most voluminous of statisticians have 
 separated cutlery from other steel goods; and I am 
 indebted to the courtesy of the United States Consul at 
 Sheffield for a table of the cutlery exports in recent years 
 
 ] Foreign Office, '96, Annual Series, No. 1685. 
 
CUTLERY 57 
 
 from the Sheffield district to the United States. It shows 
 a decline from $1,307,540-85 in '90 to $407,379*13 in '94. 
 Thanks to the new Tariff, there was better business in '95 ; 
 but the fall in the years I have quoted is very great. The 
 Ironmonger's Special Commissioner to the Antwerp Exhibi- 
 tion of '94, reviewing the matter with an expert's eye, was 
 especially struck with the falling off in Sheffield cutlery in 
 the Belgian city. English firms, he wrote, now " send a 
 dozen where they formerly shipped a gross." In shop 
 windows where some forty years before he remembered "a 
 fine assortment of all sorts of English tools and cutlery, a 
 few ship-carpenter's adzes and axes from Spear and 
 Jackson and W. Greaves and Son are the remnants 
 remaining." What wonder that his visit impressed him 
 with the belief that the great lesson of the Antwerp 
 Exhibition was " the rapid decadence of England's indus- 
 trial supremacy " 1 
 
 Nor is it only German knives and razors, inferior in 
 quality and fraudulent in mark, which compete successfully 
 with English goods. The better class of German work is 
 also in dangerous rivalry with ours; for, in truth, the 
 despicable practices to which I have alluded are by no 
 means the sole reason for Germany's success. There are 
 many others. Those among them which are of application 
 to our industries and commerce in general I shall deal with 
 in another place ; but there is one potent cause of suc- 
 cessful competition in the cutler's trade which may 
 conveniently be mentioned here. It is this : the magnifi- 
 cent quality of Sheffield work is in great part owing to the 
 amount of "unseen work" which the Sheffield blade 
 receives. Every high-grade blade made in a Sheffield shop 
 gets a prolonged hammering in its unfinished state, a 
 hammering whereby the molecules are driven out and the 
 crystals are smashed ; with the result that it acquires a 
 toughness not otherwise to be achieved, a toughness 
 permitting continual use until it is worn to a mere wire. 
 
58 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 When it is finished it shows no trace whatever of this 
 "unseen work," whose presence, indeed, not even an 
 expert can detect. The German is wiser in his commercial 
 generation. Why (in effect) put into an article a lot of 
 work, which nobody can trace, and whose chief effect is to 
 make the buyer independent of the cutler during many 
 years 1 No : what is wanted is an article that will look 
 perfect and cost as little as may be to make. Thus the 
 German cutler to his soul ; and thereafter he reduces his 
 "unseen work" to the smallest possible proportions, and 
 devotes himself to the achievement of a pleasing " finish " : 
 till even the Sheffield man is fain to admit that a German 
 knife is a better looking article than an English one. 
 
 Hardware 
 
 Let us now, for statistical purposes, take hardware in the 
 lump. In '82 we exported hardware and cutlery to the 
 value of 4,107,125; since then there has been an almost 
 steady declension, till in '95 the total reached is but 
 cl, 856,532, which represents a drop of 55 per cent, 
 in thirteen years. This branch of industry has not (further) 
 been benefited to any appreciable extent by the trade revival 
 of '95, while it is significant that our exports to Germany 
 have actually held the downward way through what is a 
 period of expansion elsewhere. Germany, on the other 
 hand, has enjoyed a steady expansion. 
 
 Consular Eeports help to point the moral of the Board of 
 Trade statistics. Sir Charles Oppenheimer, in his re- 
 ports on Germany's Commercial Relations with Foreign 
 Countries, 1 includes a set of estimated tables of the value 
 of " Hardware, &c," exports from Germany in '92, '93, 
 and '94 : The figures are 3,795,200, 3,756,100, and 
 3,704,100. The slight decrease in value is caused by 
 falling prices : the tables of quantities showing an inci i 
 
 1 Foreign Office Report, '94, Miscellaneous Series, No. 340 ; and '95, 
 Annual Series, No. 1586. 
 
HARDWARE 59 
 
 England's exports of hardware and cutlery for those years 
 were worth 2,194,726, 2,046,606, and 1,834,481, a 
 very much more serious business ! And not only is Germany 
 ahead of us ; but also she is year by year increasing her 
 distance. Our Consul-General at Tunis, in his report for 
 '94, 1 speaks of the " extinction of the hardware trade, which 
 was formerly monopolised by Great Britain." A Consular 
 despatch from Japan informs us that between '84 and '94 
 the export of iron nails from Great Britain declined from 
 four to three millions of catties, while Germany's ran up 
 from two to nineteen millions. In view of this last item it 
 is not astonishing to learn (as one may from Kuhlow's 
 Trade Review) that "the German wire-nail industry in 
 Rhenish Prussia, Westphalia, and Silesia has experienced 
 such an extraordinary development in the last fifteen years 
 that, besides supplying the enormously increased home 
 demand, the export trade has increased 250 per cent. . . . 
 According to official statistics, wire-nail exports increased 
 from 82 tons in '80 to 282 tons in '94." To give an idea 
 of the existing magnitude of this industry, it should be 
 stated that the total German export in '94 amounted to no 
 less than 56,414 tons. Of wire, galvanised and other, the 
 German export in '94 was about 209,000 tons. Worst of 
 all, over a fourth of it (59,000 tons) came to England, 
 whose total export for the same year came to no more than 
 36,000 tons. It is significant that next to Japan the chief 
 market for German wire is England. 2 Turn we to another 
 country to Koumania. In the decade between '84 and '93 
 her imports from Great Britain under the heading, " Metal 
 and Manufactures of Metal," went down from 29,390 to 
 20,872 tons; her imports from Germany went up from 
 12,670 to 34,565 tons. But the most startling figures come 
 from Belgium, which, in the first year of the decade, sent 
 2,556, and in the last year 25,733 tons. Of Bulgaria Vice- 
 
 1 Foreign Office Report, '95, Annual Series, No. 1648. 
 3 Board of Trade Journal, December, '95, p. 696. 
 
60 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 Consul Brophy reports that British trade in metals is de- 
 clining, and that our total in metal goods of all sorts comes 
 only third in the list, the first and second being naturally 
 Austria and Germany. And our hardware exports being 
 in this parlous state, our own Colonies deliberately impose 
 
 x protective duties on them ! Even Sierra Leone, which can 
 scarce ambition the establishment of a local industry, 
 enforces so high a tariff on imported English hardware 
 that the African Trade Section of the Liverpool Chamber 
 of Commerce was recently constrained to protest and pro- 
 test in vain to the Sierra Leone Chamber. 
 
 As for the United States, in some departments it seems 
 
 ' to be knocking English goods clean out of the market, 
 even in England. It is not for me to discuss the question 
 in this place. But I note it in passing, for the purpose of 
 reminding my readers how vital is the necessity of a stand 
 against the still more insidious and deadly practice of the 
 German. 
 
 Machines and Implements 
 
 I shall begin this section also with quotations from Mr. 
 Pittar's Blue-Books. Here are some extracts from the 
 returns of Foreign sales : 
 
 Steam Engines. 
 
 '90. '91. '92. '93. '94. '95. 
 
 
 
 4,442,853 3,923,872 3,217,822 3,274,395 3,065,103 2,786,967 
 
 Other Sorts of Machinery. 
 
 '90. '91. '92. '93. '94. '95. 
 
 
 
 11,907,808 11,893,643 10,669,535 10,643,148 11,140,112 12,42S,143 
 
 Implements and Tools, and Parts Thereof. 
 
 '91. '92. '93. '94. '95. 
 
 
 
 1,338,011 1,311,573 1 262,049 1,226,145 1,194,594 1,247,708 
 
 The optimist may point the finger of exultation at the last 
 
MACHINES AND IMPLEMENTS 61 
 
 two years of the second table ; but for the cheerful 
 character of its figures there exists an explanation which 
 discounts that cheerfulness. The increase, it will be noted, 
 is, after all, slight, and it is brought about mainly by two 
 factors. First of all, there has been a substantial increase 
 in the export of mining machinery to British South Africa. 
 Of late, too, it may be remarked, there has been a " Kaffir 
 Boom " in the City. The connection is obvious. Equally 
 obvious is the fact that the boom in South African mining- 
 machinery is scarce less temporary in kind than the boom 
 in South African mining-shares. Secondly, there has been 
 a substantial increase in the export of textile machinery, 
 which gratifying as it is to English manufacturers of that 
 machinery is of ill-omen to English manufacturers of 
 textiles, and is not, therefore, a subject for gratulation on 
 the part of England. It is, after all, a case of robbing 
 Peter to pay Paul \ only Paul gets but a comparatively 
 slight and unenduring addition to his income, while poor 
 Peter is robbed of his very means of livelihood : the textile 
 machinery we export to Eastern and other lands being 
 actually means and munitions of a general industrial war 
 against staple English trades. 
 
 In other departments there has been a constant drop. 
 Agricultural machinery shows a marked falling off in '95 
 as compared with '94. The drop is proportionately greatest 
 in the trade with South America, and the significance of 
 this should not be missed. It is in this same Continent 
 that Germany is pushing her wares with such astonishing 
 determination and effect. It is the same with agricultural 
 engines. The decline here is exceptionally serious, inas- 
 much as in '95 the year of Revival the fall is very much 
 greater than in previous years of bad trade. Also, it is to 
 be noted that the largest fall, actually as well as pro- 
 portionally, is in the trade with South America. Loco- 
 motive engines are a bit better in '95 than they were in 
 '94 ; but they are in a bad way, too. 
 
62 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 The detailed returns of the Board of Trade are curious 
 and unpleasant reading. For example, the export to 
 Russia in '94 was less than half what it was 
 in '93 ; though at the beginning of '94 the Russo- 
 German Tariff Treaty (in whose benefits England partici- 
 pates) came into operation, and Germany's exports ex- 
 perienced an immediate and enormous extension. 1 
 
 Still more unaccountable, prima facie at any rate, is a 
 decline of nearly 50 per cent, in our export to British 
 India, a decline but partially rectified by the upward 
 movement in '95. 
 
 And now, to complete our comparison, let us tabulate 
 the last six years of the official statistics of German ex- 
 portation. They are not compiled on quite the same lines 
 as our own ; but the headings are near enough : 
 
 Machines and Parts Thereof, Chiefly of Cast Iron. 
 
 '90 '91 '92 '93 '94 '95 
 
 marks. marks. marks. marks. marks. marks. 
 
 41,200,000 42,200,000 38,000,000 39,000,000 50,900,000 54,400,000 
 
 Machines and Parts Thereof, Chiefly of Wrought Iron. 
 
 m. m. m. m. m. m. 
 
 8,600.000 8,600,000 8,000,000 8,600,000 10,300,000 10,900,000 
 
 Sewing Machines and Parts Thereof, Chiefly of Cast Iron. 
 
 m. m. m. m. m. m. 
 
 6,300,000 6,400,000 6,400,000 7,200,000 7,200,000 8,000,000 
 
 Locomotives and Locomobiles. 
 
 m. m. ni. m. m. m. 
 
 5,600,000 5,200,000 5,400,000 5,000,000 6,000,000 8,400,000 
 
 Here we find a steady marking-time during the bad time 
 in the early Nineties, which England was unable to keep 
 
 1 In the first six months of '94 the export of German cast-iron 
 machines was nearly treble that of the same period in '93, though the 
 Treaty had only been in force for a part of the '94 time. In '93 
 England sent to Russia 300 steam threshers and engines ; in '94 only 
 190. The Russians say they can get such bargains in Germany. 
 
MACHINES AND IMPLEMENTS 63 
 
 up ; and, in the first two categories, big forward moves in 
 '94, when England, with the suspicious exception of textile 
 and mining machinery, was still falling to rearwards. 
 Note, too, the big increase in locomotives in '95, and 
 compare it with England's decreased export of steam- 
 engines in that year. Another consideration on examina- 
 tion of the detailed figures is that exports of machinery to 
 Great Britain form a substantial item in the account. To 
 export machinery to the greatest machinery-exporting 
 country in the world seems a good deal like carrying coals 
 to Newcastle. It is certainly most unpalatable food for 
 English thought. 
 
 The progress of one Bavarian firm gives apt illustration 
 of the growth of the German trade in machinery. Krauss 
 and Co. started business in Augsburg in '66. In '67 their 
 output consisted of eight engines, one of which, repairing 
 to the Paris Exhibition, came back with a gold medal. In 
 the first half of '94 Krauss and Co. built ninety engines. 1 
 The significance to ourselves of this success is accentuated 
 by the fact that it was achieved in the teeth of a formid- 
 able increase in German competition. There are now 
 thirteen other locomotive-engine shops in Germany, and 
 they evince a special aptitude for the export business. 
 Moreover, in Germany this advance is not specialised : it 
 proceeds in well-nigh every branch of the machine industry, 
 and reflects the latest improvements. There are few 
 countries in the world without a German gas-engine ; and 
 where there is no gas laid on, the German " drummer " is 
 ever ready to take an order for a German engine driven by 
 petroleum or benzine. German tools, again, are always up 
 to date, and the makers thereof have bounded on the fact 
 that the milling machine has of late become an indispens- 
 able adjunct to the manufacture of other machines and 
 tools. So, too, with machinery for making and working 
 sheet iron, with textile plant, with heating and ventilating 
 1 Foreign Office Report, '94, Annual Series, No. 1464. 
 
64 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 apparatus, indeed with every modern necessity : if you 
 want an article which is cheap, neatly finished, and 
 thoroughly up to date, you will always find a house at 
 Chemnitz, or at Berlin, or in the Rhineland, eager and 
 able to supply you. The cycle trade must not be left out 
 of account. The men of Coventry, indeed, will soon have 
 to look to their bread and butter ; for the cycle trade is 
 coming on splendidly in Germany. She used to import 
 her raw materials from England, but she is changing all 
 that now, and is actually supplying English firms with 
 tubing, ball-bearings, and other ingredients of the 
 ubiquitous " bike." 
 
 Let me illustrate these tables of mine with a few typical 
 details. First, for the trade between Germany and 
 England. In recent years our export to Germany of the 
 articles dealt with in this section has steadily declined. 
 Taking '90 and '95 as periods for comparison, the figures 
 read as follows : 
 
 Implements and Tools?. 
 
 '90. 
 
 
 68,097 
 
 91. 
 
 
 
 65,216 
 
 '92. '93. 
 
 
 
 63,962 63,431 
 
 Steam Engines. 
 
 '94. 
 
 
 58,699 
 
 '05. 
 
 
 
 54,796 
 
 
 325,602 
 
 
 
 290,946 
 
 
 
 289,561 168,385 
 
 
 
 205,016 
 
 
 
 146,465 
 
 
 Machinery of other Sorts. 
 
 
 
 ,526,288 
 
 
 1,287,218 
 
 
 1,137,953 1,264,326 
 
 
 1,416,132 
 
 
 1,456,3 
 
 Compare these with our imports from Germany. 
 
 Sewing Machines. 
 
 '90. 
 
 
 
 67,528 
 
 '91. '92. '93. '94. 
 
 >; ' 
 
 89,861 82,659 77,740 96,160 
 
 Unenumerated Iron Manufactures. 
 
 '95. 
 
 e 
 
 101,688 
 
 
 282,998 
 
 
 270,653 296,523 353,369 469,860 
 
 
 
 408,974 
 
MACHINES AND IMPLEMENTS 65 
 
 And now for a country of a different sort. Let me again 
 refer you to Servia. In '93 that kingdom imported ma- 
 chinery and parts of machinery to the value of 37,108 
 (including two locomotives and a locomobile engine from 
 Germany), the greater share in which sum was credited 
 to Austria-Hungary. England's share was for parts of 
 machinery alone, and came to no more than 1,496 : in 
 agricultural and trade implements her record merely com- 
 prising 91 out of 1,128 sewing machines (750 of the rest 
 were sent from Germany). Yiewed in the light of history, 
 this absence of English agricultural implements is almost 
 pathetic. More than half-a-century ago, when Prince 
 Milosh reigned at Belgrade, the Principality began to show 
 its head as a European nation, and to receive encourage- 
 ment from the Powers. Several European Sovereigns sent 
 the Prince goodly gifts as swords, chargers, jewelled orders, 
 and the like. The Queen of England's present took the shape 
 of a collection of all such agricultural implements and tools 
 as were made in England, of which no less than fifty-three 
 large cases arrived in Belgrade. Servia is an agricultural 
 country ; and Lord Palmerston was a Statesman with 
 vision ; and the Prince was delighted with the prospect of 
 commercial relations with Queen Victoria's realm. Now 
 our agricultural trade with Servia is nothing. The con- 
 tents of those fifty-three big cases stimulated the develop- 
 ment of Servian agriculture ; and in due time they have 
 been replaced by pieces made in Germany. 
 
 The neighbouring Principality of Bulgaria also helps me 
 to adorn my tale. In '94 our export thither of machinery 
 and tools was worth 9,480, but Germany's was worth 
 121,240, which is near thirteen times as much. As for 
 the Transvaal, the Suzerain thereof is scarce allowed the 
 chance to push her wares therein. The Government con- 
 tract for the establishment of electric lighting in Pretoria 
 forbade the use of English-made plant, and provided that 
 only Continental machinery should be used. And this was 
 
66 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 prior to " Jameson's Ride." Moreover, so favourable are 
 the German shipping rates to South Africa that our manu- 
 facturers are actually trading vid Hamburg. 
 
 In the section dealing with cutlery I referred to a 
 German triumph in the matter of sickles. It is the same 
 all over South America, which has become the Happy 
 Hunting Grounds for the German u drummer." Yet in 
 South America there are fields which as yet not even the 
 German " drummer " has completely ploughed. In Brazil, 
 for example, there are Colonies up country where agri- 
 cultural machinery is badly needed, and where energetic 
 agents, whatever their nationality, might rely on doing 
 good business. Will our English houses have the wit 
 to tap these markets before the Germans? Probably 
 they will not. These same Brazilian provinces are being 
 largely colonised by Germans even now, and there 
 will be a strange departure from German practice if touts 
 from Chemnitz and Mannheim and Berlin are not very 
 soon upon the ground. The English manufacturer might 
 study the Consular Report on these Colonies recently 
 issued by the English Foreign Office. 1 But 1 doubt if he 
 will be at the pains. 
 
 In speaking of hardware, I have already deplored the 
 competition of the United States. That competition is at 
 least equally formidable in the matter of agricultural im- 
 plements. In this department, the English camel finds it 
 hard, and hard enough, to contend with American rivals. 
 The advent of the German is like to prove the final straw. 
 
 Further 
 
 A word, ere I conclude, as to the buxom modesty of the 
 
 commercial German's mind : it reckons for much in his 
 
 country's success, and, as its presence is marked in the 
 
 industries treated in this paper, it may appropriately be 
 
 1 Foreign OJice, '95. Miscellaneous Series* No. 367. 
 
FURTHER 67 
 
 dealt with here. The Royal Commission on Technical 
 Education Report for 1884 contains this statement : 
 " Every step taken for the improvement of German indus- 
 tries was influenced mainly by the desire to strengthen 
 their position with regard to the rivalry of England. They 
 magnify the industrial advantages of England, and consider 
 it impossible to compete with England on equal terms." 
 
 An English manager of one of the largest works in 
 Bavaria told the Commissioners that : " Germany, thirty 
 years ago, as compared with England, was simply ' nowhere/ 
 but, placing English and German workshops side by side 
 now, we should find the progress made in the latter had 
 been simply marvellous. During all these years the 
 Germans have been following the English step by step, 
 importing their machinery and tools, engaging, when 
 they could, the best men from the best shops, copying 
 their methods of work and the organisation of their in- 
 dustries." This healthy disposition still prevails. The 
 Society of German Machine Manufacturers has organised 
 a special exportation branch for the sending abroad of 
 engineers. The scheme has caught on, and engineers have 
 already been sent to Chili, to Peru, and to the Transvaal, 
 and, funds permitting, others will be sent to Argentina 
 and Brazil. 
 
IV 
 
 Textiles 
 
 General 
 
 Bishop Burnet declared that England would become, 
 and remain, chief of the world for textiles. The former 
 half of the prophecy has become true. There is none 
 among her staple trades more thoroughly typical than those 
 connected with the production of spun and woven stuffs. 
 Throughout the middle ages the weavers are the dominant 
 factor in the well-being of London city. In later years 
 "the rich master clothier" of the West country is the 
 envy of the merchant-world. It was in the Northern and 
 Midland counties that the great Industry was born. It 
 was the spinning-jenny and its descendants the wonderful 
 machines that revolutionised the manufacture of textiles, 
 from calicoes to stockings, from carpets to sail-cloths 
 which changed the face of the countryside, and established 
 the nation's greatness. Well-nigh all of them were made 
 in England. Now the goods they were invented to produce 
 are made and that to an extent increasing daily in 
 Germany. She is not our sole rival. The East herself 
 is menacing our cotton trade ; Belgium has entered into 
 competition with us on the ground of linen and lace \ 
 France is fighting us hard for the silk market ; the world 
 at large contends against us for pre-eminence in this or the 
 other field. But in these pages the line is drawn at 
 
GENERAL 69 
 
 Germany, and to Germany I must restrict my purview. 
 Moreover, German antagonism is systematic, universal, 
 deadly, and may be considered as a thing of evil and a 
 thing apart. Also, it is imbecility to say that German 
 textiles are insignificant in comparison to our own. Less 
 than twenty years ago the production of German iron and 
 steel was comparatively insignificant : to-day our English 
 ironmasters are bewailing the folly which made them treat 
 it as a negligible quantity. 
 
 I do not, therefore, apologise for calling attention now 
 to the German endeavour to match with us in the textile 
 market. Whatever the point of view, a warning is more 
 useful than an obituary notice. 
 
 I propose to use the word "textiles" in its widest 
 significance, and in treating of the several branches I shall 
 show that the peril from Germany is unequally distributed 
 among them, but that there is none in which it can be held 
 non-existent. 
 
 Cotton 
 
 The Manchester man's commercial outlook is as gloomy 
 as his native city. 
 
 " Turn whichever way we may," says an official organ, 1 
 " we are met with grimly significant indications that the 
 condition of things is steadily going from bad to worse." 
 Mills are either closing or short-timing and paying no 
 dividends ; capitalists are getting to a condition of what 
 is uncommonly like demoralisation ; while the cotton- 
 spinner himself is given over to pessimism, and has heart 
 for little save political intrigue against his rivals in 
 Bombay. A return submitted of late to the Manchester 
 Chamber of Commerce showed that only six out of some 
 ninety-three spinning companies were at a slight premium 
 while fifty-two were paying no dividends at all. A key 
 to the mystery is found in the Export and Import Returns. 
 1 Textile Manufacturer, October, '95. 
 
70 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 In '81 England exported cotton-piece goods (white and 
 plain) to the value of 37,169,517 ; in '95 her total was 
 only 27,353,695. As far back as '72 her export of 
 cotton-piece goods, printed, checked, or dyed, reached 
 23,360,694 ; last year it was only 19,424,928. She 
 sent away 621,913 worth of stockings and socks in 
 '82, and only 219,381 worth in '95. The prosperity 
 of her sewing-thread industry is of later date ; yet in 
 '91 it was worth 3,254,193, but in '95 no more than 
 3,162,161. A consideration of moment is that this 
 decline in values does not signify a corresponding decline 
 in quantities. On the contrary, in some manufactures, 
 with an actual increase in the exported weight, there 
 is a decrease in the cash return. Thus, in bleached and 
 dyed cotton yarn and twist, there was a quantitative rise 
 between '93 and '95 from 36,105,100 lbs. to 40,425,600 lbs., 
 with a fall in the value thereof from 1,862,880 to 
 1,832,477. Between '65 and '95 the average price per lb. 
 of cotton yarn declined from 23*98d. to less than 8*85d. ! 
 'Tis a good enough explanation of the vanishing dividends, 
 the low wages, the lack of enterprise and initiative. I 
 in no wise contend that Germany is chiefly responsible. 
 Home competition, with over-production, are badly to 
 blame ; even worse to blame is India ; Belgium is any- 
 thing but guiltless ; disaster is preparing in industrial 
 China and Japan. But all these things make it only 
 the more vitally important that we should consider with a 
 most jealous eye the fact of further competition from 
 Germany. In commerce, too, it is the last straw that 
 induces the catastrophe ; and it is evident that Lancashire 
 is quickly nearing the limit of her load. As like as not 
 the triumph of piling on the fatal last ounce is reserved to 
 the Germans ; as the following considerations tend to show. 
 Germany has not yet succeeded in foisting her cotton 
 goods upon the world's market to a degree at a]l corre- 
 spondent with her ambition in this particular line, or with 
 
COTTON 71 
 
 her achievement in others. For the present it would seem 
 that her successes and her energies are for the most part 
 centred in the home market, which she is carefully fos- 
 tering by means of heavy duties on foreign goods. Thus, 
 on imported cotton yarns and thread she imposes a tariff, 
 which varies in amount, but reaches in the case of cotton 
 thread for retail sale and some other articles, to 1 15s. 7d. 
 per cwt. ; in that of dyed cotton coverlets to 2 5s. 9d. per 
 cwt. ; in that of bleached and dressed curtain stuffs to 
 5 16s. lid. per cwt.; and to 8 17s. lOd. in that of 
 lace. The industry thus nursed by Government, mills and 
 factories and clearing-houses are springing up like mush- 
 rooms all over the Empire. A Consular report on the 
 industry and commerce of Bavaria, after chronicling a 
 period of general depression in Bavarian trade, goes on to 
 state that " The fourteen cotton mills in the district of 
 Schwaben erected 592,730 spindles during the year ('93), 
 which shows an increase of 3,109 spindles over '92," A 
 Consular despatch from Frankfort 1 notes that, " In the 
 German shuttle embroidery industry such extensive orders 
 have been received that a scarcity of hands is felt in the 
 Saxon Yogtland " : so that " various new plants are being 
 erected even in the villages of this district, as it is hoped 
 that the necessary hands will be here more easily ob- 
 tained ; " while " the curtain weaveries are so fully 
 occupied that of late new hands have had to be sought." 
 In confirmation of Sir Charles Oppenheimer, here is an 
 excerpt from an English trade organ 2 : "In 1860 there 
 were in Saxony 27,000 hand looms, 500 hand warping 
 frames, 300 French knitting machines, 4,200 English 
 knitting machines, 50 power looms, and 1,300 sewing 
 machines, giving employment to 32,000 persons .... 
 In 1892 the machines had grown by 12,000, while 3,000 
 hand machines had been added, the number of people 
 
 1 Foreign Office, '94, Miscellaneous Series, No. 340, p. 34. 
 
 2 The Textile Manufacturer, October, '95. 
 
72 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 employed being 50,000 .... The production daily 
 amounts to 50,000 dozen stockings and socks, 15,000 
 gloves (sic), and 3,000 dozen vests, <fcc, of a yearly value 
 of 5,000,000." Lastly, a pretty clear indication of growing 
 prosperity is found in the increased import of raw material : 
 the German spinners took 166,771 tons in '85, and 277,831 
 ten years later. Do not imagine, however, that the 
 German houses are content with clothing Germany. Their 
 travellers are indefatigable abroad, and indefatigable to 
 good purpose, particularly in Russia. A London journal 
 of repute has told, of late, how the trick is done. It seems 
 that many years ago England was exporting vast numbers 
 of Turkey-red handkerchiefs to Russia. They were 
 chiefly used as head coverings by the women, and were 
 oblong in shape. The wearers would have liked them 
 square, and their wish was made known to Lancashire. 
 Lancashire, however, considered herself the better judge : 
 especially as the change from oblongs to squares meant 
 new machinery. So the Russian girls continued to curse 
 their headgear, till in time their sorrow was turned into 
 joy by the advent of a German bagman. Their heads are 
 still gay with crimson kerchiefs; but those kerchiefs do 
 not come from Manchester. Yet another country where 
 Germany is beating us out of the trade in cottons and 
 woollens both (to say nothing of cashmeres and dress 
 materials) is Roumania. To our own dominion of Canada 
 she sent (in '93) $51,000 worth of cotton stockings alone. 
 Nay, she exports to England herself; and while her 
 cotton manufactures cost us 235,547 in '91, in '94 we 
 bought them to the tune of 462,801. x 
 
 A study of her cotton statistics for the last decade 
 reveals some curious fluctuations. They may not make 
 
 1 In connexion with the German-English trade it must always be 
 remembered that much of it passes through Hulland, and that the big 
 sums credited in the Board of Trade returns to the Dutch Kingdom 
 are to a great extent of German origin. 
 
COTTON 73 
 
 for lucidity ; but they certainly denote a great advance in 
 the industry, and that despite the development of competi- 
 tion in the East. There has been a general increase in 
 the quantity of exported cottons, and in some cases in the 
 value received. Take, for example, the wares comprised 
 under the heading of " Baumwollengebe, Dichte, Gefarbt, 
 Bedrucht " ; and you find that the total export was valued 
 at 40,100,000 marks in '85, and at 49,200,000 in '94. (In 
 '93 the figure stood at 63,600,000.) Again, under " Posa- 
 mentier und Knopf macherwaaren," you have to note a 
 rise from 12,700,000 marks in '85 to 21,100,000 in '94. 
 What wonder that the Handels Museum (20th September, 
 '95) declares that the whole textile industry is in so satis- 
 factory and so healthy a condition that the outlook has not 
 been so promising for many years, and that the trade is 
 just entering upon a remarkable stage 1 As far as hosiery 
 is concerned, there are nations which may already be 
 regarded as German preserves. In Macedonia the hardy 
 natives (according to investigations conducted for an 
 Italian journal) 1 are clothing themselves in Jaeger waist- 
 coats and drawers, jerseys, socks, &c. all made in 
 Germany. The Bollettino adds that these habiliments 
 cost very little, and are very poor in quality. Not much, 
 it is added, comes from England ; and the statement is 
 borne out by the Board of Trade Returns, which show for 
 the whole of Greece a fall in apparel and haberdashery 
 from 7,646 in '91 to 2,238 in '94 ; in cotton yarn from 
 63,028 to 39,215 \ and in cottons, entered by the yard, 
 from 406,855 to 297,621. In Italy we are losing 
 ground in the same way. Messrs. Gutteridge's report on 
 the trade at Naples for the autumn of '95 states that 
 " German cotton hosiery from Chemnitz has taken the 
 place of British-made goods, being smarter looking and 
 more saleable." 
 That Germany means business in the cotton industry is 
 x Bollettino di Notizie Commerciale. 
 
74 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 further proved by (1) the Governmental appointment and 
 despatch of a delegation of experts to the United States 
 for the purpose of investigating the qualities of American 
 raw cotton, and determining whether or not it is more 
 profitable to German spinners than cotton grown else- 
 where ; and (2) the late reduction of railway rates on the 
 Austrian and Saxon lines upon cotton from Bremen. She 
 is also using her colonies for the production of cheap 
 material ; and the cotton exported from German East 
 Africa is said to be of good quality, the price of the best 
 being Z\d. the English pound as against id. for best 
 Texas. 
 
 In connexion with our export of printed goods, it is 
 well to note that the Board of Trade Returns convey a 
 somewhat misleading impression as to its extent. The 
 practice of sending cotton goods to be printed in Germany 
 inflates the official figures, inasmuch as the stuff thus dealt 
 with appears some twice in the list : (a) m-finished, as an 
 export to Germany j and (b) finished, when it is re-imported 
 and put upon the market as a genuine export. In this 
 way we are deceived as to the real value and extent of our 
 foreign trade, at the same time that we waste a very ap- 
 preciable amount of labour in shipping and re-shipping, 
 and plunder, or starve, our own tradesmen for their 
 German rivals' benefit. 
 
 I am dealing with none but German competition ; yet 
 I cannot close this section without at least denoting the 
 formidable nature of the Belgian peril. Indeed, as the 
 countries are contiguous, and their respective industrial 
 achievements are similar at many points, to take in 
 Belgium is scarcely to digress. But let the following 
 table of some Belgian exports to England during the first 
 seven months of the quoted years suffice : 
 
LINEN AND JUTE 
 
 75 
 
 
 '03. 
 
 '94. 
 
 '95. 
 
 
 Tissus de Cotons blanchis 
 
 Tissue de Cotons teints 
 
 Tissus de Cotons imprimes 
 
 With these others in money : 
 
 Tissus de Coton-Bonneterie 
 
 Tulles, Dentelles, and Blondes de Coton 
 
 kil. 
 
 152,150 
 
 279,429 
 
 27,229 
 
 fr. 
 13,995 
 54,185 
 
 kil. 
 
 182,830 
 
 359,225 
 
 33,928 
 
 fr. 
 
 5,000 
 596,554 
 
 kil. 
 
 261,661 
 
 488,206 
 
 38,987 
 
 fr. 
 
 83,614 
 
 702,661 
 
 This to England alone ! 
 over the world. 
 
 A like scale is in operation all 
 
 Linen and Jute 
 
 Linen is in far worse straits than cotton ; for whereas in 
 '64 (if we went back farther, the case would show darker 
 still) our export of home-spun linen yarn was valued at 
 .2,991,969 ; thirty years later it was worth no more than 
 939,202. This is to say that the millions of a generation 
 ago are clean gone, and even the odd thousands are the 
 worse for wear. Yet Ulster is reckoned thriving ! Nor 
 are manufactured linens much healthier than unmanu- 
 factured. In '64 the export of white or plain fabrics was 
 declared at 6,614,284; in '94 at 2,895,100. Sticking 
 to the same years (though in this instance, '65 was 20 per 
 cent, better than '64) you will find that in linens printed, 
 checked, and dyed there is a drop from 598,934 to 
 377,907; and in sails and sail-cloths one from 407,181 
 to 189,491. A provincial critic has made merry ('twas 
 the Christmas season) over my " Cassandra-like wail on the 
 decline of British trade," 1 on the ground of what he 
 described as "the satisfactory commercial results of the 
 last six months." I would recommend this buoyant 
 gentleman to take the figures I have just quoted, with 
 those for '95, and calculate how many "good years" are 
 1 Birmingham Daily Post, 2nd January, '96. 
 
76 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 wanted to restore our linen export to the level of thirty 
 years ago. To make the work a practical contribution 
 to economics, let him also allow for the intermediate 
 periods of depression, and compute (out of past experience) 
 the fall to depths yet deeper which those normal periods 
 for the " good years " are getting ever more and more 
 abnormal will occasion ; and I will make him a present 
 of the '95 statistics here and now. 1 Our export of linen 
 yarn in '95 was worth 965,467 that is, was better than 
 '94 by upwards of 26,265 : this against the fall of 
 2,052,767 since '64 ! Of plain manufactures we ex- 
 ported to the value of 3,490,704 in '95 an increase of 
 595,604 over '94 : this against a fall of 3,719,184 since 
 '64 ! For printed, checked, and dyed goods (which now 
 include damasks) the '95 exports were better than those of 
 '94 by 21,827 : this against the fall of 221,027 since 
 '64 ! In the matter of sail-cloth last year was better than 
 '94 by as much as 630 : this against the fall since '64 of 
 217,690 ! It is useful to reflect that between '90 and '94, 
 our import of German manufactured linen increased from 
 85,281 to 112,111. In this field also Belgium scores, 
 and scores heavily ; for in the first seven months of '93 
 her exports to England alone of " Tissus de Lin, do Chauvre, 
 and de Jute Toiles unies et croisees," amounted to 
 317,744 kils. ; and for the first seven months of '95 (the 
 " Revival " year) they were 520,072. 
 
 Not, however, to overstate my case : let me say at once 
 that the debdcle in the linen trade is not wholly the effect 
 of foreign competition. The craze for cheapness has a 
 great deal to do with it. Other materials are largely 
 superseding flax. You may still encounter men of Ulster 
 clothed in linen shirts ; but it is plain that, unless there 
 
 1 I think it possible the critic may need this help, for on 2nd 
 January he was possessed by the delusion that the latest available 
 returns" of the German export trade were those for '93 : though in the 
 article for which he rated me I had furnished him with quotations of 
 a year later. 
 
LINEN AND JUTE 77 
 
 come a great revulsion in the general taste, the cheaper 
 wares must triumph all along the line. It is for this 
 reason that I have coupled jute with linen, at whose ex- 
 pense, and wool's, the great advance of jute has been made. 
 There is already a strong demand for napery spun from 
 jute, and that demand has but begun. (The pretty, flimsy 
 jute napkin is everywhere ; and in many American hotels 
 the tables no longer gleam with damask, but are covered 
 with cloths which need no laundering, but are so cheap 
 they are bought in huge rolls and cut off as required 
 that to renew them is more profitable than to wash.) Our 
 own mills are doing a part of the trade in these fabrics, and 
 the official returns, taken by themselves, look fairly cheerful. 
 It is other-guess work when you take them (as you must) 
 in connection with linen. In '64 our export of home-spun 
 linen yarn was valued at 2,991,969, and that of jute yarn 
 at 114,503 ; in '95 the first had sunk to 965,467, and the 
 second had risen to 356,118. In '64 our export of home- 
 made linens brought in 8,172,813 ; and our export of 
 manufactured jute 356,764. In '95 our export of home- 
 made linens was worth no more than 4,082,559, while our 
 export of manufactured jute was 2,232,427. That is to 
 say, on our combined exports of linen and jute yarns we 
 are 1,784,887 the worse for the last thirty years, and on 
 our export for the manufactured articles 2,214,591. 
 Promising, isn't it 1 
 
 And are we getting, and are we likely to keep, a 
 command of the jute trade at all proportionate to our 
 lost supremacy in linens? Between '85 and '95 the 
 value of the German export of jute ran up from 200,000 
 to 2,337,000 marks. In other terms, the German jute 
 trade multiplied more than elevenfold in eleven years. 
 Our export, it is needless to say, shows no such increase ; 
 for in '85 the total (yarns and manufactures both) was 
 worth 2,176,387 ; and in '95 it was worth but 2,588,545. 
 With a lift of over 1,100 per cent, on the one hand, and a 
 lift of less than 19 per cent, on the other, it is not sur- 
 
78 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 prising that the Union of German Jute Producers report that 
 in some textile factories the dressing works have had so 
 much to do that they are unable, for all their capacity, to 
 supply the demand ; that there is no fear that the German 
 trade will suffer like the Scots ; and that the Erz Mountains 
 trimming industries, long depressed, are glutted with orders. 
 
 Comment may seem impertinent after such figures as 
 these. All the same, it cannot be amiss to fill in the 
 picture with some pertinent facts. Here is one. Between 
 '90 and '95 our export of jute yarn to Germany fell from 
 59,820 to 7,694 (in '94 it was 19,728) ; while that of 
 manufactured jute (piece-goods) went down from 189,222 
 to 16,924 (in '94 the figures stood at 77,057). On the 
 other hand, so swift has been the rise of the German 
 industry that Hamburg, the port whence most of the raw 
 material is distributed, bids fair, in respect of jute, to vie 
 with London herself. In effect, the German city imported 
 14,950 tons in '83, and 83,566 in '93, while in the Thames 
 the import fell in the same period from 137,631 to 1-01, 325. x 
 Dundee has fallen likewise from 205,809 to 175,286 tons. 2 
 
 I shall not relate the loss of our trade country by 
 country. A couple of cases Italy and Turkey will 
 suffice. In '90 we sent to Italy jute in piece-goods to the 
 value of 6,886 ; in '95 to the value of 713. Linen 
 yarn for Italy went down from 24,771 in '90 to 7,456 in 
 '95. Linen manufactures for Italy fell from 45,391 to 
 31,736. Our exports to Turkey including Cyprus in the 
 same period are figured thus : Jute in piece-goods sank 
 from 80,602 to 48,393, and linens (entered by the yard) 
 from 29,335 to 12,772. Now, these cases are taken at 
 random, and are typical. 
 
 1 Foreign Office, '94, Annual Series, No. 1,478. This figure includes 
 jute destined for Austrian and Russian mills. On the other hand a 
 good deal of jute for use in German mills does not pass through 
 Hamburg at all, but is shipped via Bremen and other places. Again, 
 much of the jute which is carried up the Thames is not for the use of 
 English spinners. Continental spinners get their raw material from 
 London. 
 
 2 Other calculations make these figures somewhat higher. 
 
LINEN AND JUTE 79 
 
 Are you therefore disposed to conclude that the quality 
 of our manufactures has degenerated, and that the world is 
 finding us out ? It is not so. Irish linens are still regarded 
 with as great respect as is Sheffield steel. One cause of their 
 unaltering superiority luckily it is permanent lies in a 
 climate where moisture conduces to fineness in yarns. This 
 is an advantage for which our Continental rivals must for 
 ever sigh in vain ; yet they advance and we recede. A 
 point to note is, that our makers do not concern themselves 
 with artistic finish. Here you come at once on an origin 
 of commercial decay. We slight the German's artistry, as 
 though care for appearances were a kind of foppery. Now, 
 this contempt for the aesthetics of manufacture may not 
 matter in certain industries : contractors, for instance, have 
 not yet come to look at steel girders with an eye to their 
 artistic effect, nor are town-surveyors deeply concerned for 
 the elegant finish of their drain-pipes. In the case of 
 textiles which are essentially decorative in aim and effect 
 such indifference is obviously not less foolish than strange. 
 It is none the less rife for that. A gentleman, important 
 in the Belfast linen business, with an extensive and peculiar 
 knowledge of the trade in general, told the present writer 
 that Ireland, were she so minded, could easily vie with 
 Germany in design. He admitted that Ireland is not so 
 minded : that she had rather trust in Providence and her 
 ancient reputation ! Meanwhile, reports are crowding in 
 from every country in Europe, to the effect that our in- 
 difference to form is working us irreparable wrong. It is 
 scarce to be believed that we fail to apprehend the essential 
 importance of design and finish in hosiery and handkerchiefs 
 and tablecloths. But we do. 
 
 I shall treat of technical education in its place. I would 
 point out here, that in such crafts as those now under 
 discussion, the German has advantages in this respect 
 which constitute a special menace to ourselves. In 
 discussing German competition with me, a Belfast man, 
 who knows both the United Kingdom and the Continent 
 
80 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 well, laid great stress on the importance of technical 
 education in the linen industry. To it, indeed, and to 
 longer hours of labour, he credited the German advance. 
 Of course, the latter cause is chiefly operative in the 
 mechanical departments of mill-work, where the " intensity 
 of labour " argument does not apply, and where the 
 longer a girl sits tending her machine, the greater her 
 productivity (the German working day is two hours longer 
 than the Irish ; but the Short Hours Movement is making 
 sensible progress). But there are other factors. The 
 machinery used on the Continent is often better and newer 
 than our own. 1 The effect of this will become more 
 manifest with time ; for the Irish and English manu- 
 facturers are conservative and niggardly. Of course there 
 are, and there ever will be, plenty to urge that Germany 
 will never beat us, because her manufacturers lack our 
 capital ; but they are, and will ever be, the victims of a 
 confusion of economic terms. If by "capital" they mean 
 money, no doubt our entrepreneurs have the advantage, and 
 much good it seems to do them. But if " capital" be 
 " wealth used for the creation of other wealth," our advan- 
 tage is not so manifest. Again, in Germany, the mills are 
 established in out-of-the-way places, where water is plenti- 
 ful and labour cheap. More : in linen and in jute, as in 
 all the other manufactures, the home industry is heavily 
 protected. For instance, dyed druggeting of jute or 
 Manilla hemp, imported, is penalised 6$. Id. per cwt. ; 
 while unbleached tissues of linen, hemp, or jute, above 120 
 threads, pay 1 10s. 6cZ., and thread lace .15 4$. lie?. 
 
 Indeed, almost the sole respect in which the Germans 
 have not the pull of us is that of "Wages. On the whole, 
 wages in textile Germany average pretty equally with 
 wages in textile England. Here and there, however, they 
 are actually higher; and I have been told of German 
 
 1 It is merely in the irony of things that they come to us for it. 
 For example, side by side with the Belfast mills we have machine 
 manufactories, employed in turning out the best and newest 
 machinery ; and their best customers are the Continental spinners. 
 
SILK 81 
 
 factory girls who clear their 14 marks a week for just 
 such work as in Belfast is done for 6s. to 9s. The German 
 hours are but little longer than the English, and are in 
 process of reduction. My informant, who was specially 
 qualified, and was of a cheerful disposition withal, quoted 
 these higher wages as one reason for the faith in him that 
 Germany would never beat us ! This is in the right 
 Gilbertian vein ; and at any rate, it is a " nasty one " for 
 the Cheap Labour-mongers. 
 
 Silk 
 
 It is said that there are better days in store for British 
 silk : so that the trade journalist is often moved to write 
 under such headings as " The Revival of Macclesfield." It 
 is true, too, that that most inconstant and volatile element 
 in commercial speculations the Fashion would seem to 
 be reverting to the generous use of silken fabrics, and that 
 the Trade reports a certain activity in their make. But 
 in this connexion the word "Trade" has an international 
 significance. The statement is inaccurate as regards 
 England, where, instead of advance, there has been 
 retrogression. Thus, for the last five years the Export 
 Returns (our sure and certain guide) work out as 
 follows : 
 
 Thrown, Twist, and Yarn Silk. 
 
 '91. 
 
 
 
 516,519 
 
 '92. '93. '94. 
 
 
 
 322,894 383,025 342,534 
 
 Silk Manufactures. 
 
 '95. 
 
 
 
 296,788 
 
 
 1,744,645 
 
 
 1,655,310 1,514,803 1,222,356 
 
 
 1,432,002 
 
 From these it is plain that the sole foundation on which 
 the prophets of good tidings base their cheer is an increase 
 of some 210,000 in the export of manufactured silk in 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 '95, as compared to '94 ; but, as even '95 shows a decrease 
 on '93, and '93 again on '92, and so on, the manufacturer 
 who faces the situation with a smile must have an easily- 
 contented mind. In the department of unmanufactured 
 goods, our last year's trade was about half the trade of '91. 
 If you extend your survey and, having regard to the 
 ancientness of silk wear in this country, you can do no 
 less you will find that under the heading of " Thrown, 
 Twist, and Yarn," the home-made export was worth 
 1,894,595 in '72, and is now shrunk some six- or seven- 
 fold in bulk. In '82 we sent away home-made fabrics to 
 the value of 2,692,275. Six years after we fell short of 
 that by some thirty thousand pounds ; and ever since the 
 fall has been continuous. The worst, too, is that this does 
 not mean that we wear less, as well as weave less than we 
 did, for our import has been as steadily growing as our 
 output has been dwindling : 
 
 
 
 '91. 
 
 '92. 
 
 '93. 
 
 '94. 
 
 '95. 
 
 Broad Stutfs ... 
 
 Ribbons 
 
 Other silk 
 manufacuires 
 
 
 5,451,981 
 2,676,420 
 
 3,051,187 
 
 
 5,891,507 
 2,748,887 
 
 2,771,869 
 
 
 6,304,777 
 2,513,516 
 
 2,910,113 
 
 
 7,057,139 
 2,772,369 
 
 2,919,521 
 
 
 
 S, 9SG, 663 
 3,008,810 
 
 3,015,234 
 
 11,179,588 
 
 11,412,263 
 
 11,72S,406 
 
 12,749,032 
 
 15,090,707 
 
 In '95 (that is) our bill for foreign silks was 3,911,119 
 more than in '91 : which is near thrice the worth of our 
 total export in '95. 
 
 In this industry, of course, the premier maker is France 
 her most formidable rivals being Holland for broad stuffs, 
 and Belgium for ribbons. I shall, however, leave the 
 enormous trade of all three for granted in the reader's 
 mind, and only remark, that it behoves that manufacturer 
 who is already out-made and out-sold by more capable 
 firms to have an eye of peculiar jealousy for new rivals, 
 
SILK 83 
 
 lest what little the old have left him, that also be taken 
 away. Those who have watched the course of German 
 industrialism know well that the comparative smallness 
 of the German export trade in silk is not to be accepted 
 as a criterion of future developments. Thus far the 
 operations of Germany in the silk market have been 
 characterised by a tendency to fluctuation which contrasts 
 with her steadiness on other lines, and makes the work of 
 forecast a little difficult. But a broad survey will justify 
 the conclusion that the note of the German silk trade is 
 expansion. Having regard to the aforesaid tendency I 
 shall abstain from worrying my reader with statistics ; 
 for unless I made my tables impossibly complex and exten- 
 sive they might seem u cooked," and would certainly be 
 profitless. Suffice to say that in '94 a year in some ways 
 specially hard on certain branches of the industry 
 Germany exported silk to the value of 102,500,000 marks, 
 and that that sum represents a trade near four times 
 greater than our own. 
 
 A u Silk Association of Great Britain and Ireland " has 
 been formed for the purpose of fostering the trade, and 
 there is a wide field for its energies. Let me venture to 
 indicate a certain direction in which it may employ them 
 with profit. It is just now the fashion for the maker to 
 complain that he cannot get a sufficient supply of English- 
 woven brocades and the like, and that he has to put off his 
 customers with foreign goods. On the other hand the 
 maker insists (by the medium of his trade journals) that 
 Englishwomen will buy only Continental silks, and that in 
 England, therefore (to quote The Textile Manufacturer for 
 the 15th November, '95), " no attempt has ever been made " 
 to produce fabrics worthy to compete with " the very 
 superfine goods turned out by Continental designers." 
 The Silk Association would do well to reduce these con- 
 flicting arguments to a common denominator of joint effort; 
 for, while our people are wrangling the point among them- 
 
 g 2 
 
84 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 selves, the foreigner is quietly booking the orders. Indeed, 
 so far as the existing " Revival of Macclesfield " is con- 
 cerned, it seems due to the fact that of late the Lyons 
 factories have had a great deal more in hand than they can 
 do. It is not exactly the proudest of positions ; but with 
 England this is the age of minor mercies. We must be 
 thankful for what we can get, at the same time that we 
 go on hoping hoping against hope that our people know 
 enough to establish and improve such footing as they may 
 have got shunning, above all, the peril of easy confidence 
 (signs of which are even now not wanting in a revived 
 Macclesfield), but ever reflecting that in any case the late 
 expansion is a poor thing in comparison to the bygone 
 glory, and that the upward movement is being used for all 
 it is worth by their rivals abroad. Meanwhile, the fact 
 that most of the novel designs now on the market are from 
 the Continent, makes against the hope that England is 
 using the poverty-stricken opportunity she has. 
 
 The wonderful advance of Belgium is at least as remark- 
 able in silk as in other textiles. For example, her export 
 to England alone of " Bonneterie, Passementerie, et Ru- 
 banderie " was three times greater in the first seven months 
 of '95 than in the first seven months of '93 ; while that of 
 " Tulles, Dentelles, et Blondes de Soie " had risen from 
 3,700 to 28,424 francs. 
 
 Wool and Worsted 
 
 Here is another industry exposed to special peril by 
 reason of late improvements in trade. The cheeriness of 
 the woollen manufacturer is certainly pardonable ; for he 
 has survived a period when only gloom was possible. In 
 the Report of the Bradford Chamber of Commerce for '94 
 the position was thus resumed : " The year-4894 will long 
 be remembered as one full of disappointments for the wool 
 trade generally, and the Bradford trade in particular. . . 
 
WOOL AND WORSTED 85 
 
 Traders were anxiously waiting the passing of the United 
 States Tariff Bill, expecting that the result would be a 
 speedy resumption of business with that country. . . . 
 When the Bill became law business became even worse than 
 before, and prices gradually declined, until some qualities, 
 notably merino sorts, are now quoted lower than has ever 
 been experienced." In '95 the expansion came, and manu- 
 facturers have abounded in happiness and orders ever since. 
 Here it is that the danger comes in. The expansion is a 
 result of two principal factors, the re-opening of trade 
 with North America (a most uncertain and fluctuating 
 market) and a change of fashion in favour of bright dress 
 fabrics. With regard to th*e former the increase, sub- 
 stantial as it has been in the trade with the United States, 
 is no monopoly for Bradford. Germany also has shared ; 
 and those who know the German genius for permanently 
 improving an opportunity will see in this good reason for 
 disquietude. Where the Englishman is often content to 
 beam on his fattened ledger, and give himself an easy time 
 and his wife a new carriage (in the meanwhile reposing 
 comfortably in the bosom of a beneficent Providence), the 
 German grapples the new chance with hooks of steel, and 
 turns it with conspicuous success to the permanent profit 
 of his business. This is shown by the strange and terrify- 
 ing case of the United States. In the fourteen years be- 
 tween '80 and '93 our exports to the States of woollen 
 dress-goods have fallen from 40,620,256 square yards, 
 valued at $8,719,721, to 27,503,999 square yards, valued 
 $4,588,009 ; while Germany's have risen from 3,024,879 
 square yards, valued at $759,900, to 20,246,819 square 
 yards, valued at $4,464,688. Our proportion of the total 
 trade was 56*5 per cent, in '80, and 28 per cent, in '93; 
 Germany's was 5 per cent, in '80, and 27 per cent, in '93. 
 But the '95 expansion was not worth much to the Bradford 
 manufacturers apart from the American trade and the 
 boom in mohair and lustre goods. The export of manu- 
 
86 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 facturecl goods to European countries was actually down, 
 and was balanced by an almost similar import from the 
 Continent. 
 
 That I am not taking too pessimistic a view, the follow- 
 ing figures will, I think, make clear. Our import of foreign 
 woollens has grown out of all proportion to our growth in 
 population. Our bill Berlin wools and fancy yarns 
 (practically all German) from 58,910 in '61 to 
 216,435 in '95; that for yarns for weaving from 
 306,648 in '61 to 1,825,590 in '95; that for all other 
 woollen manufactures from 1,419,336 in'61 to 10,976,828 
 in '95. In the face of this enormous increase in the space of 
 a single generation Yorkshire has surely little reason to 
 rejoice 1 The yarns might be cited as raw material for British 
 manufacture ; but to do so were to beg the question ; they 
 are partly manufactured articles, and the processes they 
 have already undergone are processes which form an 
 integral part of English industry. Note, too, that the 
 biggest increase of all an increase of nearly 700 per cent. 
 is under the heading of Manufactures ! The woollen and 
 worsted yarns for weaving come chiefly from Belgium ; 
 but the yarn for fancy purposes which may be reckoned 
 as fully-manufactured is mostly made in Germany. 
 Germany and Holland (it is impossible to separate these 
 countries) are the main vendors of our imported Woollen 
 Cloths, and second only to France in Woollen Stuffs; 
 in the unenumerated list they are an easy first. 
 
 Now for a dip into the history of German woollens. In 
 the Sixties there was no German Empire, so it will serve 
 our purpose well enough to start from '85. Now, German 
 woollens have fluctuated, even as German silks have 
 fluctuated ; but German woollens, like German silks, 
 tend generally upwards. In '85 the German export of 
 " Gekammte Wolle " was valued at 4,900,000 marks : 
 in '95 at 19,237,000. In felt (the German import of 
 which has never exceeded 100,000 marks) the German 
 
WOOL AND WORSTED 87 
 
 export of the principal classes was worth 2,600,000 marks 
 in '85 and 5,340,000 in '95. In hosiery, lace, buttons, &c, 
 substantial increases are likewise recorded. An extract 
 from the Board of Trade Keturns will show the value 
 of the German export to England alone : 
 
 Woollen Manufactures. 
 
 '90. 
 
 
 
 670,444 
 
 '91. '92. '93. 
 
 
 
 767,284 774,483 741,776 
 
 '94. 
 
 
 907,569 
 
 Yarn for 
 
 Fancy Purposes, including Berlin Wool and 
 Zephyr Yarn. 
 
 
 177,547 
 
 
 191,713 181,895 185,894 
 
 Yarn for Weaving. 
 
 
 197,224 
 
 
 58,260 
 
 
 66,893 73,562 100,249 
 
 
 111,749 
 
 Our spinners confess themselves unable to compete with 
 the Germans, the French, and the Belgians in the spinniDg 
 of Botany yarns in certain counts ; but as English Botany 
 yarns have the best reputation, it seems a pity that 
 the English spinners should not follow the advice of 
 The Bradford Observer, and " give the matter earnest 
 attention." But, indeed, with individual exceptions, of 
 course our people are the victims of a chronic indispo- 
 sition to keep abreast with the times. One instance of 
 what I mean must suffice. It is an extract from a report of 
 the Bradford Chamber of Commerce : " Official notices 
 of Exhibitions to be held at Antwerp, Bordeaux, Lyons, 
 Milan, Santiago, and Hobart were received during the 
 past year, but as Bradford manufacturers and merchants 
 have recently shown an aversion to taking part in further 
 exhibitions, no action was taken in the matter." Compare 
 this torpor and the energy and intelligence with which the 
 
88 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 Germans seize such opportunities for bold advertisement. 
 It is idle to say that business is not furthered by partici- 
 pation in exhibitions ; if proof to the contrary were needed, 
 it might be found in the great expansion of German trade 
 with the United States which followed the Chicago Exhi- 
 bition, and the eagerness with which the Germans availed 
 themselves of that show. If it be a question of commercial 
 dignity, one can only hope that such " dignity " will be 
 pocketed ere the time comes when it is the only thing our 
 manufacturers have left to pocket. Yet Bradford believes, 
 notwithstanding, that by exhibiting in years gone by she 
 has lost considerably more than she has gained. 
 
 Another point to note is that the paragraphs in the trade 
 journals devoted to new inventions are records, to an 
 ominous extent, of German skill. It is scarce possible 
 to glance through one of these prints without being in- 
 formed that " a variety of worsted having a high lustre 
 and feeling like silk, has lately been made in Germany" ; 
 or that "a German has patented a process for manu- 
 facturing velvet leather which (it is claimed) will become 
 an important addition to that class of articles which are 
 useful for personal attire." Yorkshire should remember 
 that woollen and worsted goods (particularly when they 
 form articles of feminine attire) are not as the laws 
 of the Medes and Persians, and that variety and novelty 
 are par excellence the note of success in the weaving 
 trades. 
 
 A Suggestion 
 
 The Iron and Steel Trades, brought face to face with 
 disaster from foreign competition, instituted special in- 
 quiries : and good may even now result from their action. 
 Why are there no Committees of Investigation for textiles ] 
 The German raider has done much against these industries, 
 and threatens more. Is not this the time to strike a blow 
 for salvation ? The scheme of the Blackburn Chamber 
 
A SUGGESTION 
 
 of Commerce for sending a mission to China is an excellent 
 one, and, being promoted by the Textile Trades, may- 
 be regarded as in a way a specialisation of my own sugges- 
 tion. But what is really wanted is a Committee of In- 
 vestigation, expert and representative, to examine into the 
 whole matter of Continental methods, successes, prospects. 
 It might do much to re-establish our supremacy. Of the 
 several points at which such a Committee might profit by 
 inquiry, I shall dare to indicate two : the foreigner's 
 superiority in design ; and his suppleness in adapting 
 himself to the needs of whatever public he may take 
 it on him to supply. 
 
CHEMICALS 
 
 The Weather-Glass of Commerce 
 
 The Chemical Trade is the barometer of a nation's pros- 
 perity. Thus Lord Beaconsfield ; and having regard to the 
 infinite ramifications of that trade, and to its irresistible 
 tendency to extend to every department of production and 
 consumption M. Berthelot will have it that our food is 
 soon to be synthetised from coal-tar one is not disposed 
 to quarrel with the aphorism. The discomforting signifi- 
 cance of the appearance of Chemicals in this Black List of 
 mine will, therefore, be at once apparent ; yet, if they were 
 omitted, my survey of the effects of German competition 
 would be absurdly incomplete. Indeed, it is no exaggeration 
 to say that Germany is a more formidable rival, and has 
 already given us a sounder beating in Chemicals than in 
 any other field of Trade, not even excepting Iron and Steel. 
 The treatment of chemical products is becoming one of the 
 mainstays of industrial Germany, as those huge factories 
 at Elberfeld, at Frankfort, at Leipzig, and elsewhere : 
 factories paying dividends up to 28 per cent. exist to 
 show. In England the industry in several branches is 
 little better than a Bottomless Pit for capital : in proof 
 whereof I may instance the disappearance of many of the 
 smaller manufacturers and the sore straits of those syndi- 
 cates in which some businesses are merged. 
 
THE WEATHER-GLASS OF COMMERCE 91 
 
 It is a curious coincidence that the application of some 
 chief discoveries which have revolutionised the Chemical 
 Trades should correspond in time with the Franco-Prussian 
 War. The German Soldier established the political 
 Empire ; the German Chemist of the early Seventies went 
 far to do the same for the industrial State. No happier 
 point could have been devised for the beginning of a Great 
 Industry than the moment when Germany, flushed with 
 victory, and glorying in her new-found strength, went 
 forth to conquer the world in trade, as she had conquered 
 France in arms. Now, in so far as Chemicals are con- 
 cerned, there is no invincible reason why the New Know- 
 ledge should have profited her alone. There is only the 
 fact that she seized her occasion, while England let hers 
 slide. Why and how these things were done will appear 
 as we go. 
 
 "Chemicals" may conveniently be divided into five 
 chief divisions : (1) Crude Drugs and Medicinal Prepara- 
 tions ; (2) Heavy Chemicals ; (3) Fine Chemicals ; (4) 
 Anilines and their Derivatives ; and (5) Essential Oils. 
 I shall treat them separately under these headings ; but to 
 give an accurate general idea I must correlate their several 
 degrees of consideration. The scientific revolution is the 
 cause of this necessity. To consider, for example, the 
 progress of the trade in Crude Drugs and Medicinal Pre- 
 parations apart from the trade in Fine Chemicals, or even 
 in Anilines and their Derivatives, were to get a misleading 
 view of the situation. Indeed, it is a vital and a growing 
 necessity for us to go still farther. The new discoveries 
 are thrusting into departments and encroaching upon 
 industries to which the Chemical Product had been hitherto 
 a stranger. An obvious illustration is the supersession of 
 Vegetable Dyes by Anilines. Unless you are wearing a 
 blue shirt (perhaps not even then), and are clothed in 
 homespun and home-dyed tweeds from the Western Isles 
 of Scotland, you are safe in concluding that your every 
 coloured article of apparel has seen the inside of an aniline 
 
92 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 dye-vat. Equally obvious is the growing use of Chemical 
 Manures. The High Farmer is no more satisfied with the 
 " muck" wherewith his fathers fed the soil : chemical aids 
 are a prime need in intensive agriculture. Such novel 
 developments make it all the more important that England 
 should see to her share of the trade. The growth of that 
 trade in Germany does more than menace England : it 
 strikes all round, and that in ways of which the Custom 
 House Returns tell nothing, save to the careful student 
 alone. 
 
 My arrangement of the Chemical Trades is probably as 
 good as could be devised ; but it is vitiated by the way 
 in which the several sections overlap each other. Citric 
 Acid, for example, is, on the one hand, an ingredient of 
 mineral waters, and, on the other, is used in the manu- 
 facture of Manchester goods. This is an additional reason 
 for regarding the Chemical Industries as a homogeneous 
 whole, varied and diverse as they seem. 
 
 Crude Drugs and Medicinal Preparations 
 
 Under this heading I am rather concerned with Trade 
 than with Manufacture. For the major part of this 
 century London was the great market for Crude Drugs 
 from the Tropics and the East. To London they were 
 sent in shiploads, either for trans-shipment elsewhither, or 
 for distribution after refinement and the like. And the 
 trade is either going or gone. The beginning of the change 
 may be dated from '69 : it coincided with the entrance 
 into active life of the Suez Canal. The opening of the 
 Canal and the laying of the cable did much to further it, 
 by substituting direct trade between European consumers 
 and Oriental producers, for indirect trade vid England. It 
 has proceeded apace. 
 
 Indeed, the wreck in some branches of our Export of 
 imported merchandise is more startling than anything in 
 the annals of British Commerce. Here is an instance. 
 In '82 the declared value of our export of Peruvian Bark 
 
DRUGS AND MEDICINAL PREPARATIONS 93 
 
 was 903,333 ; in '95 it was 40,553. The difference in 
 quantity is not so great as the difference which overproduc- 
 tion and competition have made in price ; but there is little 
 consolation to the trader there. Once the Cinchona Bark 
 came all to England from South America. Then Ceylon 
 and Java were planted, and it came from the East mostly 
 to London still. During the last few years it has been 
 found that Ceylon growers cannot compete with Java, 
 which boasts a better soil and a more scientific method. So 
 the British Possession is knocked out ; and the richer 
 article from Java dominates the market and the richer 
 article goes all to Amsterdam. Up to three years ago 
 London had a famous fortnightly sale of Cinchona : she 
 has a monthly one now, and its size is about a fourth of 
 that they hold in Amsterdam. And Camphor is fast going 
 the way of Bark. Fifty years ago English Camphor was 
 supreme throughout the world. Now (though England 
 maintains her reputation for excellence) a very large part of 
 the camphor-refining trade has gone to Hamburg ; and once 
 Japan makes headway with the refining factories which she 
 has started of late, the English trade will speedily go over 
 to the Dodo and the Great Auk. 
 
 Or take the case of Opium. In '84 the trade was worth 
 371,225, in '95 it was worth 94,671. The Chinaman, 
 (that is) consumes as shamelessly as ever ; only England 
 doesn't supply the drug. In other articles her trade has 
 declined from a total of 510,548 in '80, to one of 
 438,569 in '94. So, too, with her Dyeing and Tanning 
 Stuffs. In '67 4>he computed value of her Cochineal, 
 granilla and dust, was 446,449; in '95 it was 29,419. 
 Her trade in Cutch and Gambier was at its height in '83, 
 when it totalled 319,267 ; in '95 it had dwindled down 
 to 200,435. Her best in Indigo was as far back as '71, 
 for which year she declared a value of 2,527,979 ; but by 
 '95 that value had shrunk to 954,227. Her Madder fell 
 from 10,653 in '71 to 2,334 in '81 ; her Madder-Root 
 from 10,057 in '68 to 6 in '81 ; and now both articles have 
 
94 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 lost their miserable individuality, and have to be lumped 
 with Garancine and Munjeet, to produce (in '94) the 
 very magnificent total of 1,838. (In '95 the lot is still 
 further debased, and figures among the Unenumerated. 
 The English trader in Guano has done little better. 
 His business was worth 653,928 in '76, and only 
 12,617 in '95. Our terrific losses in Vegetable Dyes 
 and Tanning Substances are explained by the sub- 
 stitution of Aniline for Vegetable Dyes, of which I shall 
 speak later. With regard to drugs, however there is a 
 special explanation, which I may as well give now : it 
 is the relative cheapness of Antwerp, Hamburg, Rotterdam, 
 and other ports in Germany and the Netherlands. The 
 English drug-trade cannot endure the high dock-charges of 
 the Port of London. The ruinous quality of these charges 
 is not felt to the same extent in big trades having their 
 own wharves as it is in the Drug Trade, which is a 
 matter of small quantities. Every one is agreed that the 
 London docks are overbuilt and overcapitalised ; and 
 there are who say that their management leaves much 
 to be desired. Be that as it may, the charges are 
 greatly in excess of those exacted at the Continental 
 ports (in some cases they are twice as much) and 
 the Drug Trade has not stood the strain. Merchants 
 have essayed to meet it by sending lighters alongside the 
 ships in port, and so avoiding that ruinous passage across 
 the quays ; but the device, though sanctioned by Act of 
 Parliament, is like to be knocked on the head by the Com- 
 panies' trick of entering into agreements with the ship- 
 owners, whose captains are ordered not thus to disembark 
 their cargoes. 1 In the frustration of this trick the London 
 Drug Merchants place their last hope of recovering lost 
 ground ; and in view of the active and growing rivalry of 
 Hamburg, Antwerp, Havre, and the rest, this hope looks 
 dreadfully like despair. I quoted figures in my First Paper 
 
 1 According to latest information the ship-owners are objecting to 
 enter into these agreements. 
 
ALKALI 95 
 
 to show that the great and rising port of Hamburg is 
 a standing peril to English trade, and I need not here 
 oppress my reader with further statistics in proof. What, 
 however, I must insist on, are the facts : (1) that the Dock 
 System there, and at Antwerp and Rotterdam, makes 
 traffic much cheaper than traffic at London ; and (2) that 
 the charges of the Shipping Companies trading thither 
 favour the Continental merchant. Herein consists the 
 explanation of much that has befallen the English Drug 
 Trade. For the rest we may look to German " push " and 
 English sloth. The German Druggist never rested till, by 
 hook or crook, he had wormed out the addresses of our 
 producers \ and Asia and South and Central America are 
 dotted thick with German agents now. This zeal has 
 eaten us up ; and when they are not sweating with planters 
 in the Tropics, they are " learning the business " in England, 
 from druggists who are getting plenty of time for the im- 
 parting of useful knowledge. 
 
 Heavy Chemicals 
 
 Alkali 
 The industries technically known as Heavy Chemicals 
 group themselves largely round Alkali and its products. 
 Down to late years, Alkali was a peculiarly English 
 industry. We manufactured not alone for ourselves but 
 for the world at large, as may be gathered from the fact 
 that in '73 our Alkali Export was worth near three 
 millions sterling. How we have fared since that year is 
 told by the following table : 
 
 '73. '83. '93. '94. '95. 
 
 
 
 2,929,006 2,124,962 1,857,928 1,630,948 1,560,140 
 
 Here we are confronted with the damning fact that, 
 whereas fresh uses and (owing to the growth of manu- 
 factures abroad) fresh markets for Alkali Products are 
 continually being found, the export of the greatest Alkali 
 
96 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 Trader in the world was last year of little more than half 
 its value in the early Seventies. Nor do the latest years 
 show any signs of recuperation. The decline since '91 
 has been continuous ; and that it had no connection with 
 any " general depression M is shown by the failure of the 
 '95 Revival to help it one whit. 
 
 Down to some five years ago, the trade was in the 
 hands of a number of different firms, all struggling along 
 under the adverse influences of competition and the 
 Middleman. In '90 about forty of these houses as a last 
 hope of salvation combined themselves into a huge 
 concern, with eight millions capital, under the name of 
 the United Alkali Company. Internecine competition 
 was stopped, the Middleman was abolished, and better 
 times were confidently announced. The Company, in the 
 first two years of its existence, managed to pay a dividend 
 on all its shares ; then it ceased to pay on the ordinary 
 until '95, when a dividend of one per cent, was declared ; 
 but already in '96 it has had to close more than one works. 
 Its utter failure to stay the ebb of a national industry is 
 shown by the steady fall in its lifetime in a national 
 export. That it is in low water is not due to foreign 
 competition alone ; for the rivalry of Brunner, Mond, and 
 Company, x with other firms, among which may soon be 
 reckoned the new Castner-Kellner Company (already 
 building works in England), is largely responsible. Largely 
 too, is foreign competition : Sweden, among other countries, 
 is competing heavily with England. The electrolytic 
 processes in use there are damaging the United Alkali 
 Company's trade in Chlorate of Potash, which is used 
 in the Swedish match factories ; and what is worse 
 Swedish Chlorate of Potash found its way last year to the 
 
 1 The fact that Brunner, Mond, and Company, the one really 
 successful firm in England, is practically an international concern, 
 puts it in a separate category from the genuine local English industry. 
 The ownership of certain patents, with certain other causes, sets this 
 house beyond the reach of foreign competition ; but it is deadly 
 rival to other English Alkali Works. 
 
HEAVY CHEMICALS 97 
 
 English market. The Tyne, too, is in no better case than 
 the Mersey. It is exactly a century since the Leblanc 
 Process began to be worked at Newcastle. In 1799 the 
 make of Soda-Crystals was about 10 tons; in 1830 it was 
 over 3,000 tons ; in '62 it was 51,000 tons ; and in '82 it was 
 104,000. The weight of Salt decomposed in '82 was 
 188,000 tons; but in '93 it was only 90,963. Again, in 
 '30 there were four Alkali Works on Tyneside ; in '73 
 there were twenty-four ; now there are five. 
 
 I have mentioned Sweden as one formidable competitor. 
 Another is Switzerland. But I need not travel beyond 
 the familiar field. That our neighbour, the German, is 
 more than equal to the task of crowding us out of the 
 market, may be gathered from the statement (in the 
 German Catalogue of the Chicago Exhibition) that, whereas 
 Germany as late as '77 produced about 42,000 tons of 
 Soda a year, her annual output is now considerably over 
 195,000. In the ten years from '85 to '94 her export 
 of Soda- Ash grew from 11,981 to 33,556 tons. In 
 the same period her import diminished in like pro- 
 portion. Our own export of Alkali to Germany has 
 dropped from 134,300 tons in '93 to 112,198 in '95 ; our 
 export of bleaching materials from 7,740 tons in '90 
 to 2,330 in '95. This growing inability of ours to sell 
 in Europe is owing in no small measure to the high 
 Protective Duties in which our Alkalis are mulcted (on 
 Caustic Soda they reach 2s. 0^d. per cwt.) ; so that reports 
 from Her Majesty's Consuls in Germany are rich in 
 references to the prosperity of the Heavy Chemicals 
 Trade. From Stettin, for example, you learn 1 that the 
 Union Chemical Manufacturing Company's "production 
 was not equal to the demand " ; that " it was necessary to 
 erect two new acid-producing apparatus"; and that the 
 Company has declared a dividend of 10 per cent. There 
 is no question here of an insidious advance. The matter 
 1 Foreign Office, 95, Annual Series, No. 1652. 
 
 H 
 
98 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 is, simply, that our trade has gone to the devil, while the 
 Germans are piling up fortunes. 
 
 Manures, etc. 
 
 Another big branch of Heavy Chemicals is the manu- 
 facture of Manures. Every farmer will testify to the 
 exceeding value of these stuffs. 'Tis a modern means of 
 fertilising the soil, and there can be no doubt that it has 
 a very great future. Obviously, then, it is in the highest 
 degree important that England should keep a firm hold 
 of the trade. What, alas ! is equally obvious, is, that 
 England's grip on it is relaxing, but that Germany is 
 tightening hers. It is not easy to gauge the extent of her 
 increased production, because figures are not obtainable 
 save in certain branches of the industry. Such as they 
 are, they are significant. Sulphate of Ammonia shares 
 with Nitrate of Soda the foremost place in the production 
 of chemical manure : it has now become as cheap, and for 
 some purposes it is more useful. It is a by-product, 
 chiefly obtained in gas manufacture ; but there are other 
 sources, and of late a new one has been found in the 
 coking-oven. Now, the recovery of Sulphate of Ammonia 
 from coking-ovens has been, and still is, neglected by all 
 save a very few English ironmasters ; nor are the Scotch 
 themselves much thriftier than we. But in Germany 
 they are not as we are, and in Germany they are using 
 their coking-ovens to this end for all they are worth. The 
 Combined German Coking -Works, for example, are now 
 making from 1,200 to 1,500 tons a month; and it is esti- 
 mated that from all sources the annual production in 
 Germany of Sulphate of Ammonia reaches 100,000 tons. 
 This may be rating the production too high in the 
 absence of statistics it is impossible to check the figure ; 
 and of course the major part of the product is from 
 ordinary gas-making sources. But it is this new recovery 
 
HEA VY CHEMICALS 99 
 
 from coking-ovens which is the special danger. It is an 
 industry which the Germans are making peculiarly their 
 own, and are exploiting with great gain to themselves : 
 for it is very cheaply worked and very profitable. The 
 English Manure Trade, on the other hand, is not in happy 
 case ; and to lump together Holland, Belgium, and Ger- 
 many (which, as I have explained, is to get at the extent 
 of the Anglo-German trade) is to find in '94 a drop of 
 6,000 tons in her export of Sulphate of Ammonia for '93, 
 and in '95 another drop of 5,000 tons on her export for '94. 
 Messrs. Thomson Aikman and Company in their Annual 
 Report for '95 say : ''The Fertiliser Trade has been more 
 depressed than ever, and prices have touched the lowest 
 recorded points during the last few months owing to over- 
 production and agricultural depression." The state of 
 the trade may be gauged from the ruling prices of '95 as 
 compared to those of '94. Phosphate has declined in value 
 nearly 25 per cent., and its price is less than half that of a 
 few years since. In the course of '95 the price of Sulphate 
 of Ammonia declined from 11 or 11 5s. per ton to 8 
 10s. or 8 15s. ; '96 sees it at 7 15s. Of Germany you 
 learn from the same authority : " The value of Potash 
 Salts continues to be regulated by the combination of 
 German producers." One factor in Germany's success is 
 the working of the Stassfurt Mines near Frankfort, which 
 contain large natural deposits of Salt. The discovery of 
 these mines led to an enormous increase in her output of 
 Saltpetre : with the result (in the words of a Scottish 
 chemical manufacturer) that "the Germans have com- 
 pletely displaced every manufacturer of Saltpetre in the 
 United Kingdom, and have almost monopolised the con- 
 sumption of the world. Indeed, they have utterly gobbled 
 up the industry." Yet the existence of a good local source 
 of supply of Potash in Germany should scarce have led to 
 the annihilation of an English industry ; for Nitrate of 
 Soda is an equal ingredient in gunpowder making, and 
 
 it 2 
 
100 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 that the Germans have to bring from South America, even 
 as ourselves. Moreover, Gunpowder is still an effective 
 argument, and Englishmen cannot surely ! feel quite 
 comfortable in the thought that Germany may cut off 
 their Saltpetre when she will. This is a matter of im- 
 portance beyond commercial circles. Is it supineness or 
 sheer ignorance that accounts for the silence of our 
 military authorities? 
 
 Salt 
 
 Even in the ordinary Salt Trade the Germans have en- 
 croached upon us. The story is worth study. The Salt Union 
 was formed in England in '89, and the manufacture of 
 Salt was thereby converted into a big monopoly. As the 
 Salt Union, Limited, is an institution for the paying of 
 dividends, it put up its prices in the cheery fashion of 
 them that feel the market all their own. Its directors 
 reckoned without their Germany. They can make Salt 
 there too. It is not so good as the Cheshire product, but 
 it is Salt, and it is much cheaper than that sold by the 
 Salt Union. When that syndicate's price went up, the 
 German manufacturers pushed into the world-market, 
 and that to a purpose which is strikingly illustrated in 
 the case of our great Dependency. India needs much 
 foreign Salt, and the Indian ryot needs it cheap : for the 
 Salt he uses has to bear the burden of a tax. The natural 
 result followed : German Salt to a large extent ousted 
 English from the Indian market. In '94 it looked as 
 though we were getting back the trade ; but there followed 
 a fall from 226,781 in '94 to 152,152 in '95 (which 
 is nearly 10,000 below '93), and the fall has gone on 
 into the early months of '96. Also, the Union's supply of 
 Salt for chemical purposes has fallen from 600,000 tons in 
 '90 to 275.000 tons in '95. 
 
FINE CHEMICALS 101 
 
 Fine Chemicals 
 
 The grouping under this head is of necessity somewhat 
 arbitrary, and comprises wares of such various use as 
 Quinine and Photographic Materials. These two illustra- 
 tions come naturally to a pen which writes of German 
 competition ; for on no article of commerce chemical or 
 other does the hand of the German lie heavier than it 
 lies on these ; so that to the student of Anglo-German 
 Trade they are even as the u awful warnings " of inebriety 
 to the teetotal lecturer. 
 
 Quinine 
 
 Years ago England held a foremost place in the prepara- 
 tion of this invaluable drug, and for quality her name 
 ranks first even now. Yet the fact is all too obvious that 
 she has lost the market, and that Germany has captured 
 it. This is all the more serious in view of the steady 
 increase in consumption. It is estimated that the world 
 uses some ten million ounces of Quinine a year, the value 
 of which is about 500,000. It is likewise estimated that 
 four-fifths of this total is made in Germany, whose chemists 
 are ever devising new preparations : with the most en- 
 couraging results in the way of Export Trade. 
 
 Photographic C/iemicals 
 
 Our Board of Trade Returns make no special mention of 
 the chemical accessories of photography. Yet the imports 
 of Photographic Materials from Germany are increasing 
 enormously : not alone absolutely (for with the extension 
 of the Kodak-Amateur that is not remarkable), but rela- 
 tively, in proportion to the home trade. The most glaring 
 instance is that of Albuminised Paper, the manufacture of 
 which is utterly in German hands In '95 the German 
 
102 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 export was worth 3,334,000 marks, the import being a 
 negligible quantity. So, too, Pyrogallic Acid and the 
 other Photographic Chemicals may be described as German 
 monopolies. Yet it is worth noting that the best cameras 
 and plates and the like are made in England, and that the 
 sole reason why the English Photographer does not get his 
 complete outfit at home is that the German is the better 
 chemist. In Germany, workers as well as professors give 
 themselves a scientific training, and this training they 
 apply in their workshops. In England, on the contrary, 
 Technical Education, despite its noisiness, is wretchedly 
 backward. The workers lack knowledge ; the professors 
 disdain its practical application; and the Dewsbury and 
 District Technical School is found advertising for an 
 assistant science master, " qualified to teach Chemistry and 
 Physics," at sixty pounds a year. 
 
 Analysts' Chemicals 
 
 Room may here be made for the bitter cry of them that 
 work in laboratories and places where they analyse. With 
 the exception of one or two specialities, no manufactory of 
 Pure Chemicals of any account exists in this country. The 
 analysts have to get them from Germany to their deep 
 disgust. For (excepting in the case of one or two high- 
 class firms) the only thing pure about these wares is their 
 price, which is up to the very highest level. With the 
 growth of Technical Education in England the use of Pure 
 Chemicals is increasing. Is Technical Education also 
 destined to be an arable field for the German? Again, 
 the Mechanical and Physical Apparatus used in labora- 
 tories and schools in England come in vast quantities from 
 Germany. Experts characterise these tools as of " very 
 poor workmanship liker toys than anything else " ; but 
 the prices are exorbitant. They are bought apparently by 
 teachers out of sheer ignorance : for the simple reason that 
 
ANILINES 103 
 
 the German manufacturers get English publishing and 
 school-providing firms to become their agents. 
 
 Anilines 
 
 In the history of Anilines and their Derivatives you 
 find the clearest record of England's failure to maintain 
 her supremacy in the Chemical Trades. It was the dis- 
 covery of Anilines that wrought the biggest revolution in 
 modern chemistry. These dyes are extracted from Coal- 
 Tar products, Benzole and Anthracene being raw material- 
 Considering the vast amount of coal which is used in 
 England, the natural conclusion at which an uninformed 
 observer would arrive is, that in England any manu- 
 facturing use to which such cheap stuff could be put would 
 flourish to a preponderating degree. Yet the uninformed 
 observer would err. Instead of using it ourselves, we 
 suffer the German Chemist to ship it from our ports, that 
 in mighty German factories he may extract the colours 
 wherein the world and his wife are bedizened, and 
 coin himself such profits as must make some Englishmen 
 sick with envy and some others sick with shame. As 
 years go, it is quite a new manufacture ; yet already 
 it has made such strides in Germany that there are 
 factories at Elberfeld, Mannheim, and Berlin, which find 
 employment for 3,000 to 6,000 hands apiece. Of late, 
 as far as profits are concerned, the Germans have a little 
 overdone the thing : the temptation to embark on so 
 golden a tide was too powerful, and over-production and 
 low prices have been the issue. But this very greed 
 makes English apathy only the more glaring. In the 
 words of the Chemical Manufacturer I have already 
 quoted : " Here we are lying asleep indeed, we hardly 
 know where or how to begin, and those who have been in 
 the business are pretty well driven out of it." 
 
104 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 The extent of the Aniline Trades in Germany may 
 be gauged from the fact that her export of Aniline Oil 
 and Aniline Salts has grown from 1,713 tons in '85 
 to 7,135 in '95 (the progress being especially remark- 
 able in the last three years) ; while in Alizarine her 
 increase has been from 4,284 tons to 8,927. In Aniline 
 and other Coal-Tar Dyestuffs her exports have leaped 
 from 4,646 to 15,789 tons; so that between '94 and '95 
 the increase was nearly equal to 25 per cent. In '95 
 we ourselves took 2,634 tons of German Alizarine, with 
 3,258 tons of Aniline and other Coal-Tar Colours, which 
 is an increase of about 30 per cent, on our purchase in 
 '94. In short, Germany makes nine-tenths of the arti- 
 ficial colouring in use throughout the world (France and 
 Switzerland sharing the remainder with England) ; and 
 she is extending her trade. Her export of Aniline and 
 other Tar Dyes to China rose from 189,115 in '89 to 
 296,550 in '94; her export to Japan from 22,850 to 
 61,071. To multiply a trade by three in five years is no 
 bad record. Also, with regard to both these countries 
 German commercial diplomacy has been exceedingly busy 
 since the War; and it is confidently anticipated that 
 what lias been is a bagatelle compared to what will be 
 in the near future. That Mission to China which the 
 men of Blackburn are promoting is badly wanted. So far 
 as Japan is concerned, it is worth noting that the German 
 trade in Chemicals far exceeds the English, though our 
 General Export to Japan is much larger than Germany's. 1 
 
 Of our Export Trade between '90 and '95 you shall 
 find recorded under the heading " Dyestuffs " a drop from 
 530,801 to 473,546, and less than half of this latter 
 sum goes to Coal-Tar Products. In some directions our 
 Dyestuffs Trade seems to be silently vanishing away as 
 
 1 We do not even find a use at home for the immense quantities of 
 pitch produced in gas-making, but send nine-tenths of it to the 
 Continent for the manufacture of briquettes. 
 
ANILINES 105 
 
 if it had met a Boo j urn ! The export from the Bradford 
 District to the United States fell, between '91 and '94, 
 from $2,749 to $446. In '95 there was nothing. Now 
 read this extract from a compilation on the trade of 
 Scotland, &c, for '95, published in The Glasgow Herald: 
 " The present year has been, from a dyer's point of view, 
 not a satisfactory one, as large quantities for few shades 
 have been scarce, and, on the contrary, innumerable shades 
 have been wanted, and very small quantities for each. 
 So much has this been the case that we think it would be 
 for the good of the trade to have a series of standard 
 shades fixed for each season, and not to go beyond these. 
 We dare say, however, that it would be impossible to get 
 the trade and its customers to agree on this." You may 
 li dare say " all that, sensible Scot, in view of the fact 
 that those customers have under their potential patronage 
 an army of German Chemists and German Manufacturers, 
 ever engaged in producing novel shades, and only too 
 happy to supply them in any quantity, small or large ! 
 There will be many more unsatisfactory years if your 
 fond counsel be followed. 
 
 Besides the general causes of English depression, in 
 which the Chemical Trades have their part, there is a 
 special reason for our failure in Anilines. One knows not 
 whether the label should be "Parsimony" or "Purblind- 
 ness " : it is probably a deadly blend of both. In previous 
 chapters I have hinted that the English manufacturer's 
 lavishness is apt to centre itself in, not his factory but, 
 his personal wants ; the rule within that factory being a 
 morbidly jealous eye on expenses. In Germany it is all 
 the other way. There is one factory at Elberfeld, where 
 not less than sixty trained Chemists form a part of the 
 permanent establishment. These gentlemen have well- 
 furnished laboratories at their disposal, and they receive 
 a regular salary for what the English would call " doing 
 nothing " (but the German calls it " Research "). They 
 
106 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 have no routine tasks in connexion with the ordinary- 
 business of the firm : their work is simply to analyse and 
 experiment day after day, and year after year, until one 
 of them develops a new process, or a great use for some- 
 thing hitherto known as " waste " : when the fortune of 
 his employers (in which he shares) is made. The 
 Elberfeld Factory is no solitary instance : in Germany 
 the Elberfeld system is the rule. The Badische Anilin 
 und Sodafabrik at Mannheim, for example, employs an 
 even greater number (seventy-eight, no less !) of 
 chemists. " Reckless extravagance " would be the English 
 manufacturer's comment : but the last dividend paid by 
 this Company was 25 per cent. There is an extravagance 
 which pays ! That is how the Germans have conquered 
 the world in the application of Chemistry to practical 
 needs : that is how they continue to extend their dominion. 
 To pay comfortable salaries to a big expert staff, in order 
 that every several man on it may simply pursue his 
 scientific bent, would be regarded by the British Manu- 
 facturer (who rarely employs more than six chemists ; 
 who never employs any chemist at all in Pure Research) 
 as a wanton and stupid waste of money money which 
 would rent a deer-forest, or keep a country house. But it 
 is in discordance with the fitness of things, when that 
 manufacturer bewails the Badness of Trade, which 
 compels him to sell his country house, and take his family 
 to Brighton or Littlehampton, instead of inviting gunning 
 friends to Sutherland. Yet Anilines are an English 
 discovery. Forty years ago, Mr. Perkin found out how 
 to extract a Mauve Dye from Coal-Tar ; and for a time 
 such trade as there was in Anilines was in English hands. 
 Alizarine, too whence Turkey-red is made was born in 
 England j but it has become so effectually naturalised in 
 Germany, that England literally knows it no more. 
 
ESSENTIAL OILS 107 
 
 Essential Oils 
 
 That branch of Practical Chemistry which is concerned 
 with the distillation of Essential Oils is in little better 
 case than the others. Despite England's record as the 
 best Distiller of Oils, the Germans have thrust into the 
 trade, and are taking and keeping a strong grip on it. 
 Leipzig is the centre, and the stills there are constantly 
 increasing their output. Why 1 ? The secret lies in the 
 way the thing is done. The methods are based upon the 
 chemical examination of constituents. 
 
 Perfumes 
 
 A trade in Perfumes is commonly regarded as peculiar 
 to the Politer Nations. It follows that France stands 
 conspicuous in the public regard as a maker of Scents ; and 
 more than one English distiller has been unable to resist 
 the temptation to take on a Gallic alias. Yet England is 
 honourably known in the connection, and some Scents are 
 held to have a more delightful fragrance if the label on the 
 bottle be English. It is otherwise with Germany. It is 
 hard for the general mind to imagine the German Courts 
 as homes of politeness and refinement ; and from an asso- 
 ciation of ideas rather than through a process of reasoning 
 Scents " made in Germany " do actually (with the ex- 
 ception, of course, of Eau de Cologne) rank low in the 
 regard of the general nostril. They are u made in Germany " 
 notwithstanding ; and to an ever-increasing extent. The 
 manufacture is of recent birth ; but it is forging or rather 
 shooting to the front. There is excellent reason why it 
 should. The distillation of perfumes is a Chemical Process : 
 clearly, therefore, it can best be done by men not strangers 
 to the Science of Chemistry. The Germans have grasped 
 this fact, and in dealing with Essential Oils they proceed 
 on scientific principles. In England sometimes, at any 
 
108 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 rate it is not so. There is one famous English Scent 
 which may serve for an example. It is manufactured 
 according to tradition practically, that is, after the 
 fashion of an old wife's recipe : the scientific aspect goes 
 unheeded, and the product is dear. The same perfume is 
 now made in Germany after scientific methods ; it is said 
 to be as good as the English brand ; it is certainly much 
 cheaper. It is more than probable (I may add) that many 
 purchasers, both here and abroad, ask and pay for the 
 English variety and get the German. For in Drugs and 
 Perfumes the Merchandise Marks Act is treated with an 
 indifference nothing less than sublime. 
 
 German success in this field is clearly and entirely an 
 effect of the victory of Science over Rule-of -Thumb. The 
 typical English distiller proves his ingredients and the 
 quality of his mixture merely by his sense of smell. The 
 German applies regular and certain scientific tests, and is 
 therefore the less liable to go astray. Moreover, who says 
 Science says cheapness. Also, the comparative failure of 
 the English scent-maker is all the more inexcusable, by 
 reason of the fact that the Essential Oils from which Per- 
 fumes are made are better distilled in England than in 
 Germany. 
 
 Soap 
 
 In the old days, when Brown Windsor was a luxury, 
 Englishmen washed with soap of English make ; and those 
 who could not afford " Scented " cleansed themselves with 
 " Yellow " or " Mottled." Thanks (partly) to Continental 
 Chemistry, we have changed all that, and tablets of 
 " Scented" can now be bought at a price but little in 
 excess of that we used to pay for u Yellow." It is, no 
 doubt, a gratifying circumstance that Board Scholars 
 should take on a "shining morning face" by means of 
 Lily of the Valley, or Balm of Mesopotamia, at twopence 
 halfpenny the cake : though hygienic experts have some- 
 
ESSENTIAL OILS 109 
 
 times that to say respecting the properties of these wares 
 their makers would scarce print as an advertisement. 
 Still, the progress of Practical Chemistry has evidently 
 reached a point at which the manufacture at a profit of 
 agreeable Toilet Soaps at a low figure is possible. But 
 why should this manufacture be so largely in foreign 
 hands ? They twit us with our debased fondness for the 
 tub, and they do but add injury to insult when they send 
 us the soap for use therein. The Germans (a non-tubbing 
 race) have not yet invaded the English soap market so 
 victoriously as is their wont : though even here the Teuton 
 hand may be discerned by the expert in forged trade-marks. 
 At present their chief success complete in its way in 
 the Soap Trade, consists in routing the English export by 
 means of protective duties, and this they have effectually 
 accomplished. One very big English firm has tried to 
 break the barrier down. But that English firm has failed : 
 for the German genius loves not Reciprocity. 
 
VI 
 
 THE LESSER TRADES 
 
 The description " Lesser Trades " is no disparagement. 
 I seek not to convey the impression that, collectively or 
 singly, the trades in toys, in leather goods, in musical 
 instruments, in paper, in glass and earthenware, are any- 
 thing like a negligible quantity ; my meaning is that in 
 each case the individual trades are on a lower level than 
 the gigantic industries with which I have hitherto dealt. 
 None the less, it is foolish to disregard them, and yet how 
 little heed is given to the fact that, to a large and an ever- 
 increasing extent, our children's playthings, our own gloves 
 and purses, our pianos and violins, our sheet music and 
 photogravures, our glass bottles and " fancy goods," are 
 made in Germany. The German is wiser in his genera- 
 tion. He is devoted to the big matters the production of 
 iron and steel, machines and engines, woollens and cottons ; 
 but he is devoted also to these others. In themselves they 
 may be comparatively not actually small. But they fill 
 the chinks in the Industrial State ; and their aggregate 
 amount is something very big indeed And we neglect 
 them worse than we neglect the great industries themselves. 
 
 Toys 
 
 The Scoffer in this Made-in-Germany matter usually 
 makes the other side a present of Toys. " Toys 1 O yes," 
 
TOYS 111 
 
 he says, " the German of course beats us there." And he 
 says it as becomes a man who thinks it rather a fine thing 
 on the whole that the German should beat us there. Now, 
 skill in the construction of toy-engines by no means implies 
 the lack of it in the construction of big machines ; and the 
 importance of an industry from the commercial standpoint, 
 lies not in the use to which its products are put, but in the 
 volume of the industry itself. Bulk and steadiness being 
 equal, the consumption of a nursery is as valuable as the 
 consumption of a dining-room or a railway ; and the Toy 
 Trade has attained to proportions which are very far indeed 
 from mean. It is a branch of commerce which is well 
 worth looking after, and we have quite failed to look after 
 it. So that in London the manufacture is well-nigh at the 
 point of death. It is a pity ; for year by year, more money 
 is being spent on toys, despite their growing cheapness. 
 Indeed, the Toy Trade is no fit subject for neglect, but a 
 big thing, which should profit the manufacturers of the 
 more elaborately constructed mechanisms, and provide, as 
 regards the workers, not only wages for factory-hands, but 
 independent, light, and interesting handiwork for people 
 barred from other employments. In the towns and in 
 the country, too, for that matter this home industry 
 might well supplement the allotments from which so much 
 is expected in the direction of securing our working classes 
 a better standard of living, and a greater freedom from 
 anxiety. As it is, its German development is so full of 
 instruction to the student of German innovation in any 
 branch of industry, that I make no apology for treating it 
 at a certain length. 
 
 At the present moment there is a toy industry in England 
 (located chiefly in the East End of London). But not only 
 is it powerless for competition, it is also powerless to hold 
 its own at home. In '82 the value of our total import of 
 toys was 525,597. It had grown in '95 to 997,647. 
 
112 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 The '95 import was made up as follows : From Germany, 
 459,944 ; Holland, 1 336,783 ; Belgium, 20,162 ; France, 
 165,190; United States, 14,159; other foreign 
 countries, 882; and British Possessions, 767. In '94, 
 the total German Export was valued at 895,000, as against 
 565,000 in '84. England is thus the chief market for 
 German toys ; but she is not the only one {e.g., California, 
 where, according to the German Consul at San Francisco, 
 the trade is wholly in German hands). You may search 
 the Board of Trade Export Returns in vain for any mention 
 of any export of British Toys to anywhere. 
 
 The figures quoted are the sum totals for toys of all sorts ; 
 to the English Customs House official a toy is but a toy. 
 Yet there is as infinite variety in toys as there is in the 
 life outside the nursery, which it is their function to reflect 
 within it ; and the conditions which govern the prepara- 
 tion of Noah's arks are quite another than those which 
 obtain in the manufacture of steam-engines or dolls with 
 vocal stomachs. Yet, as a rule, it is safe to conclude that 
 the Germans beat us. In some instances the greatest 
 success lies with the Austrians or the French, in a very 
 few with ourselves. Those triumphs of modern ingenuity 
 they deserve the name which are known in the trade 
 as Mechanical Toys, may be cited as an object-lesson in 
 English lack of enterprise. They are now made mostly in 
 Vienna or, Paris, though Germany has a share of the trade. 
 So had England once. Up to about five years ago an 
 English firm made them, and made them well, always ex- 
 cepting a certain lack of finish, which English manufacturers 
 seem to regard as the hall-mark of excellence. This firm, 
 the sole representative of the English industry, has now 
 abandoned the manufacture, and the most patriotic uncle 
 could not, an he would, find a mechanical toy of English 
 
 1 This may be reckoned with Germany. 
 
TOYS 113 
 
 make. The same firm has lately devoted its best energies 
 to the manufacture of lead soldiers. I have examined these 
 side by side with those of German make, but, though they 
 mark a big advance on the little tin soldiers (in two dimen- 
 sions and with no faces to speak of) on which my early 
 military ambition fed itself, and though they are also an 
 English speciality, there is a notable difference between 
 them and their German-made rivals; and the difference 
 (much slighter here than in other kinds of toys) is in favour 
 of the last, whose finish, too, is better. But the deftness 
 and intelligence of the French and German toymen may be 
 best appreciated by contrasting a Kitchen or a Bedroom of 
 theirs with a London-made one. The taste, the realism, and 
 the workmanship of the foreigner give the home-made 
 article the look of a cheap and clumsy copy. Clumsy it 
 certainly is inexcusably so in places ; but cheap it is not, 
 for the price will probably exceed that of the others. A 
 still more flagrant disregard of the proprieties is manifest 
 in the English toyman's trick of signifying an animal's 
 colour and markings by splotches of paint. Now the Ger- 
 man covers his animals with real skins, and the Nursery 
 has in consequence pronounced in favour of his Menageries. 
 'Tis the same with his Railway Apparatus. For about a 
 guinea the playroom can be fitted up as a Line, with 
 Stations and Rolling-stock complete, but it will be an 
 JSisenbahn, and not an English Railway, though the 
 Stations may bear English names. Military Toys, too 
 Helmets and the like are mostly of French or German 
 make ; so that the boy who aspires to an English helmet 
 must go to a real accoutrement maker. It looks nothing 
 near so smart as the Continental article, and costs about 
 double the price. 
 
 With Dolls the case is somewhat different. The Conti- 
 nental makers have captured this market also (not by 
 virtue of the more beautiful workmanship, for nothing in 
 the bazaars can exceed the beauty of the best English wax 
 variety) ; and that by means of the conservatism of the 
 
 I 
 
114 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 English makers in the matter of "Wax. "Wax Dolls are 
 very costly and very fragile ; they smash readily, scratch 
 easily, and melt freely. French and German Dolls are 
 made of a papier-mdche composition. They are strong, and 
 they neither scratch nor melt, they are better jointed, 
 above all, they can be washed. You can buy for 4s. Qd. a 
 German papier-mdche "baby" (as our foremothers said), 
 equal in size, and superior in every respect except appear- 
 ance (and there not so very greatly inferior) to an English 
 wax, which would cost you half a guinea. 
 
 A word as to Toys in Carved "Wood. They all come from 
 the Black Forest, where they are made at home by the 
 peasants ; only the larger and the more intricate being 
 factory-made. True, the white pine of the district is of 
 special excellence ; but, surely, that is not enough to pre- 
 vent the importation of the craft to England 1 Finally, 
 the cost of carriage to England gives a handsome start to 
 the English toyman, if he would but avail himself of it. 
 The freight varies ; but the principal toy-merchant in 
 London tells me that on Imported Toys it averages from 
 8 to 12J per cent, of the cost. 
 
 Glass 
 
 The Chairman of the Birmingham Dispensary had occa- 
 sion of late, in view of the opening of a new branch, to 
 place a contract for medicine-bottles. His dispensary had 
 got into the habit of sending to Germany for bottles ; but 
 he suggested that now it should give England a chance. 
 It did. The quality was to be exactly the same as that of 
 the German make, and the price turned out to be 10 
 per cent, lower. But the quality proved to be corre- 
 spondingly lower. The Head Dispenser stated his inability 
 to pass the bottles. They were stained and smeared as 
 though they had been in use for years ; whereas the German 
 stuff had always been sent in bright and clean. Happily, 
 there is a mitigating explanation. Owing to the softness of 
 
GLASS 115 
 
 ordinary English Flint Glass, English makers had hitherto 
 neglected the processes necessary to produce vitrified 
 enamelled labels, and had allowed the manufacture to fall 
 into the hands of the Germans. But the firm in question 
 had more progressive instincts, and set to work to produce a 
 glass infusible enough for the purpose. The result of their 
 first experiments was the unfortunate consignment alluded 
 to. I am glad to learn, however, that this firm has extended 
 its experiments, and has since produced enamelled labels 
 which will compare well with those made in Germany ; and 
 the Birmingham Dispensary neither complains any more, 
 nor sends abroad for its bottles. But the fact remains that 
 English bottle-makers have in the past allowed their German 
 rivals to cut in ahead of them, and the circumstance 
 throws light on one cause of the English manufacturer's 
 failure to defend his home-market and explains the marked 
 success attending the Bottle Import Trade of a certain 
 German house in the City ; it also excuses the remark of an 
 English Manufacturing Chemist, who stated (in his wrath, 
 no doubt) that " there is not a single bottle-maker in this 
 country who understands his business, or at any rate attends 
 to it." That chemist gets his bottles made in Germany. 
 His very adverse criticism prompts the enquiry : How has 
 the Bottle-Making Industry fared of late in Germany and 
 England 1 Need it be said that our Export has declined ? 
 In '89 we sent forth Common Bottles to the tune of .464,742; 
 in '95 to the tune of 323,814. As far back as 73 we exported 
 Plate Glass to the value of 328,699 ; but in '95 the export 
 only amounted to 79,901 : about a fourth, that is, of what 
 the industry was worth to us twenty years since. In the 
 same period, the value of our Flint Glass Export has 
 dropped from 359,265 to 214,598. Our Export of Glass 
 manufactures to Holland in '90 was more than twice the 
 value of that of '95. Conversely, our Import has been growing. 
 Our bill for German and Dutch Window-Glass rose from 
 121,514 in '90 to 202,749 in '95 and for other Glass 
 Manufactures the account has been " swelling wisibly " like 
 
 i 2 
 
116 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 the young woman Mr. Weller watched at the Brick Lane 
 Tea Party. As thus : 
 
 Glass Manufactures (not "Window Glass) Imported from 
 Germany and Holland. 
 
 '90. '91. '92. '93. '94. '95. 
 
 
 
 621,605 736,277 846,248 918,323 1,012,727 892,405 
 
 The total German Export of Glass and Glasswares to all 
 countries has shot up from 38,059,000 marks in '83 to one 
 of 46,767,000 marks in '95. 
 
 The German Government, it may be noted, looks after 
 the German Manufacture by imposing a duty of 12s. 2d. a 
 cwt. on Imported Glass ; but Broken Glass is free. There's 
 free-trade generosity for you I 
 
 The Potter's Thumb 
 
 Our Export of Earth and China-wares, including Manu- 
 factures of Clay, has dwindled from 2,562,088 in '83 to 
 2,170,322 in '95 ; while our Import is nearly half as 
 much again as at the beginning of the Eighties. Of course, 
 Germany is responsible for part of this increase. Her 
 Export of Porcelain Goods, worth 365,000 in '85, was 
 worth 737,500 ten years after. The increase of German 
 Chinaware in this country is a matter of household know- 
 ledge. At present the stuff is chiefly inexpensive j so the 
 gross amounts on the books of the Customs Houso does not 
 look big in proportion to the bulk of the nation's trade. 
 But the makers of Porzellen are eager to compete in the 
 costlier wares. A house in the West End, where the very 
 best china is sold, is frequently invaded by representatives 
 of German firms, who wish to purchase samples : which 
 samples, when they get them, are used as models for the 
 German Potter. Yet, in the cheaper wares at any rate, 
 German artistry is often better than English, in finish as in 
 symmetry, and in design. In this trade, indeed, the 
 Germans are rather grateful than not for the Merchandise 
 Marks Act. The "Made in Germany " stamp is more of 
 
CEMENT 117 
 
 an advertisement than a brand ; though on mugs and orna- 
 ments announcing themselves as " Presents from Shrimp- 
 ton," the legend reads quaintly enough. At times the 
 information is unnecessary, as in the case of certain 
 souvenirs sold in the shops of Edinburgh, which were 
 labelled "A Present from Edingborough." Yet Scotland 
 stands where it did, and Scots Wha Hae is but an excuse for 
 the consumption of Scots Whisky. Undoubtedly, if the 
 British Potter is to hold his own, he will have to improve 
 in the matter of design. A timely reference was vouch- 
 safed to this at the last annual meeting of the Exeter and 
 District Chamber of Commerce, in the course of a discussion 
 on the revival of Devonshire Pottery, which is good in 
 colouring, but weak and trivial in design. Is not here 
 opportunity for artists'? The breeched and petticoated 
 crowds (with palettes !) who turn the Lyn Valley into 
 succursales of South Kensington, might profitably artisti- 
 cally, and not commercially alone vary their quest of 
 " picturesque bits," by bestowing their talent (such as it is) 
 on the Local Potter. 
 
 The Clay Product itself is getting Germanised ; so that 
 now the necessary Drain Pipe often bears the German 
 brand. It has appeared (for the rest) on the sanitary 
 supplies of more than one British Corporation j so that 
 individually and collectively the Swine of Gadara are " not 
 in it " with us. 
 
 Cement 
 
 Bead the Export Returns of English cement for the last 
 six years : 
 
 '90. '91. '92. '93. '94. '95. 
 
 tons. tons. tons. tons. tons. tons. 
 
 628,441 575,969 492,615 437,565 425,582 395,401 
 
 valued at 
 
 '90. '91. '92. '93. '94. '95. 
 
 
 
 1,281,963 1,140,697 902,910 744,424 703,389 641,918 
 
 Could anything be more melancholy ? And the pitifulness 
 
118 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 of it is but enhanced when we go farther back, and find 
 that up to '90 English Cement Makers had been steadily 
 building up their trade. Thirty years ago our total Export 
 was represented by a sum of 280,916 ; from that time 
 to '90 its record is one of vigour and success ; but the 
 steady drain of the last six years tells an unmistakable 
 tale. Do you ask where the trade has gone ? " There are 
 upwards of sixty-three cement works in Germany. The 
 year's output is about 10,600,000 barrels, and in the 
 production of this quantity of cement 18,000 workmen 
 were employed." 1 The German Export grew between '85 
 and '95 from 345,633 to 471,123 tons; so that it is con- 
 siderably more than the English. It is to the rise of the 
 industry in Germany, and to her improvement of the 
 product (which aforetime was of very inferior quality), that 
 Kent owes the decline in her one important manufacture. 
 Leather Goods 
 
 Here the chief advance of Germany is in the matter of 
 Gloves. The English Glove Trade is not deemed worthy of 
 mention in the Board of Trade Returns, so far as the 
 Export is concerned ; but in respect of the Import you may 
 learn therefrom that the value of the German gloves 
 brought in had risen from 4,453 in '90 to 27,934 in '95. 
 Big as the increase is, it makes but a trifling figure in com- 
 parison to our yearly payment to France for the same 
 article. We are not buying quite so many French gloves 
 as we were ; and, doubtless, the increase in the German 
 Export to England is partly the result of the German sales 
 into France. Still, that increase is twice as great as the 
 French loss ; so that the latter is not an adequate explana- 
 tion of the former. And even if it were, the fact would 
 reflect no credit on the English Glover, who, if the French 
 trade were shown to be not invulnerable, should at least 
 have been able to capture the Home Trade, and should not 
 
 1 Consul-General's Report on Trade of Hamburg, for 1893. 
 
PAPER AND PASTEBOARD 119 
 
 assuredly have let the Germans do the capturing for 
 him. Glove-making itself, however, is but a part of the 
 iadustry. There is also the preparation of the Leather. 
 2< T o\v, English leather ranks high ; yet our principal Glovers 
 get their material from the Continent, and many (one 
 night say most) of the makes sold as theirs are English in 
 [ittle more than name. We imported from Germany in '95 
 Handschuhleder to the value of 14,133,000 marks (from 
 11,732,000 in '94) : our Export thither of the same material 
 figuring at 1,389,000 marks. This reads odd for a nation 
 celebrated (as England is) for the best tanneries in the 
 world. German Glove Leathers are advancing, and by big 
 strides too. In '85 the Export was worth 24,800,000 
 marks ; in '95, 47,599,000. Small wonder that you have 
 to search London as though for a rare bird, if you want to 
 get a real English pair of gloves ! 
 
 Even more remarkable is the German advance in matter 
 of Waxed Cloth. In '85 the Export was worth no more 
 than 600,000 marks; in '95 it had risen to 1,114,000. 
 
 Paper and Pasteboard 
 
 In the matter of Paper, the old Statistical Abstracts of 
 the United Kingdom denote the import of none save Print- 
 ing or Writing Paper. It is startling, therefore, to fall, in 
 later Abstracts, on the notes of such gigantic amounts as 
 are credited to our Import of other sorts under the head of 
 " Other Paper Except Hangings." The last issue sets forth 
 for 1880 a sum of 709,294. Ten years later that amount 
 was more than doubled, and it has been mounting steadily 
 ever since : as thus : 
 
 '90. 
 
 '91. 
 
 '92. 
 
 '93. 
 
 '94. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1,528,932 
 
 1,725,885 
 
 1,946,630 
 
 1,878,151 
 
 2,122,041 
 
 Of late, indeed, our import of foreign Paper and Paste- 
 board has waxed so formidable that the compilers of the 
 
120 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 Board of Trade Returns have had to change their formula 
 and make room for explanations. In '95 an amended 
 classification was adopted : it shows that in that yeai 
 England bought Foreign Unprinted paper to the value oi 
 2,046,106 ; Foreign Printed to the value of 254,042 ; and 
 Foreign Straw-Board, Mill-Board, and Wood-Pulp Board to 
 the value of 545,254. In the aggregate for '93, '94, '95, 
 these three items ran up from 2,347,204 to 2,845,402. 
 Seeing that, despite Board Schools and halfpenny news- 
 papers, the consumption of paper cannot have increased 
 in recent years in the ratio indicated by these figures, it is 
 evident that the British Paper-Mill is not having a rosy 
 time. As a fact, English journals and other consumers of 
 paper buy largely abroad, and many a patriotic Englishman 
 would feel a shock were he to be told that the favourite 
 newspaper from which he draws his daily or weekly supply 
 of anti-German politics was printed on paper made in 
 Germany. Prince Bismarck, it may be mentioned, is him- 
 self a big paper-maker, and trades with England like the 
 others. 
 
 So much for German Export and English Import ! A 
 reference to the English Export will complete the effect. It 
 represents the total value of English-made Paper, other 
 than Hangings, sent out of the country : 
 
 '88. 
 
 '01. 
 
 '92. 
 
 '93. 
 
 '94. 
 
 '95. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1,674,908 
 
 1,554,733 
 
 1,431,204 
 
 1,333,375 
 
 1,274,741 
 
 1,288,763 
 
 A paltry 14,000 was the best that the '95 Revival could 
 do for a Vanishing Industry ; and if we may judge from 
 the normal course of the trade, it is as likely to mean Over 
 Production as Improvement. 
 
 Other countries than Germany have largely increased 
 their make in recent years; but we need not just now 
 concern ourselves with them. Germany alone will serve 
 our turn. In '94 there were 860 Paper and Card Factories 
 
PAPER AND PASTEBOARD 121 
 
 in Germany, with 1,020 machines, whose Total Output was 
 estimated at 810,000,000 kilogrammes. Little wonder, 
 then, that Germany can do without English paper, and 
 apply herself to the work of supplying the world at large. 
 Here are some statistics. The Import is decreasing : that 
 of Packing and Unglazed Straw paper has been lowered 
 from 878 tons in '85 to 209 in '95. The total Export of 
 Gold, Silver, and Coloured paper was valued at 13,700,000 
 marks in '85, and 25,402,000, last year. Under the heading 
 of Parchment, Cigarette paper, &c, her Export leapt from 
 3,000,000 to 6,135,000 marks in the same ten years. Her 
 Packing and Straw paper, her Paper and Paste Goods are 
 also on the upward grade. Her Writing and Blotting 
 paper teach a lesson of their own. In the eleven years 
 since '85 the Export has risen from 23,609 to 42,794 tons ; 
 yet in '85 it is worth 20,100,000 marks, and only 14,122,000 
 in '95. This is significant of the general havoc wrought 
 by German Industrialism. Not only is English trade being 
 ruined, and the English worker being turned out into the 
 street to look for work which has gone to Germany ; but 
 also the German workers and capitalists, under the stress 
 of that competition they have themselves created, must put 
 up with an ever-diminishing revenue from their product. 
 At present, thanks to the increased productiveness of their 
 factories (a matter of new machinery and better organisa- 
 tion), to Protective freights and other industrial aids, they 
 are not feeling the full effect of the new conditions as they 
 will do later. Beset by dwindling profits, and falling 
 wages, and a deepening labour-strain, they will have time 
 and occasion to reflect that the counsels of the Agrarian 
 party were after all worth listening to ; at the same time 
 that we, on our side of the water, shall be puzzling miserably 
 at accentuated Unemployed and Low Wages problems. 
 Meanwhile, they have begun to feel the pinch, as have 
 those other nations which have brought up their home 
 manufactures on a diet of Protection, and Export 
 
122 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 Bounties. By '94, indeed, the Foreign Paper-Maker of 
 Europe had landed himself in such a plight by over-produc- 
 tion, that an International Congress of Paper and Card 
 Makers was summoned to Antwerp in the October of that 
 year. They had a mournful tale to tell ; and the sole 
 remedy proposed was that there should be no more working 
 Sundays. The English Paper-Makers were invited to the 
 Congress, but the Paper-Makers' Association pointed out 
 that already English mills all closed on Sundays, and the 
 most of them did half Saturdays as well. One English 
 maker did attend, and showed the Continental men that, 
 bad as they held their state to be, the English makers' was 
 worse : for tliey must stagger under a burden of Factory 
 Acts and penal legislation in respect to the Pollution of 
 Bivers, from which the others were free. As an instance 
 of the working of the Bivers' Pollution Acts I may cite 
 the recent case of an Englishman, who started a paper- 
 mill on the lower reaches of the Thames. His process 
 necessitated the discharge of a brown effluent. It was 
 quite harmless, and the thin brown stream from his mill 
 could do little towards disfiguring the stretch of water. 
 But the law was against him, and the law was put in force. 
 The work was impossible without the effluent, so the work 
 was stopped and the business has been destroyed. This is 
 very far from being an isolated case. 
 
 Again, protection counts for much in the Paper Trade. 
 Germany penalises Imported Paper in sums ranging from 
 6d. per cwt. on Grey Blotting Paper, to 12s. 2d. per cwt. 
 on the more elaborate Hangings, and 1 10s. 6d. (in ad- 
 dition to the Excise Duty) on Playing cards. As the 
 English representative at the Antwerp Congress re- 
 marked : Not only do Foreign Governments shut out 
 English paper by the imposition of hostile tariffs, while 
 English ports are wide open to Foreign Papers ; but also 
 Foreign Governments give their makers bounties on ex- 
 portation ; many lines being favoured with State aid in 
 
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 123 
 
 proportion to the amount of their freight of home-made 
 goods ; while in some countries raw materials are kept 
 below market value by the imposition of export duties. 1 
 If the Congress wanted to get at the root of over-produc- 
 tion (he added), his hearers had but to put their fingers 
 on this Protective System. No doubt he was right ; but 
 this, after all, was not the last word. Of late, the Germans 
 have advanced in quality as well as quantity, and the pre- 
 judice we used to entertain against their paper " is a thing 
 of the past," as The Paper Exchange News admits. Are 
 English makers striving m like manner to improve their 
 product 1 Adversity has doubtless taken the heart out of 
 them ; but without a determined effort to keep ahead of 
 their rivals, their state must worsen steadily. Again, it is 
 the Germans not we who are finding new uses for paper. 
 The latest comes from Berlin : it is an invention for the 
 manufacture of Paper Horse Shoes. It sounds grotesque, 
 but it seems like to be extremely serviceable, as not only is 
 it cheap, but also it prevents the wearer from slipping on a 
 wet or frozen road. 
 
 For the quality of English paper, it is a curious fact 
 that proposals to stamp English paper " Made in England," 
 have been met with disfavour by the Trade. Does this 
 mean that the stamp would carry no recommendation ? If 
 it do, then Ichabod indeed ! 
 
 Musical Instruments 
 
 The piano is everywhere. The cheapest middle-class 
 home lacks a chief household god till the " upright " is 
 installed. It is a questionable aid to the national artistic 
 life ; but think of the pianoforte manufacturer ! Think 
 of him, by all means, dear reader, but think his case out as 
 it really is. It may help you to a right appreciation of the 
 
 1 See letter of Mr. G. Humphreys -Davies, Secretary to the Paper - 
 Makers' Association, in The Times, 24th October, '95. 
 
124 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 English maker's happy state to learn that last year 
 England imported musical instruments to the value 
 of 996,193; of which sum 563,018 went to the 
 credit of Germany, and 146,913 to that of Holland and 
 Belgium. This puts a different complexion on the case. 
 Messrs Broadwood and the rest contribute to the supply of 
 their countrymen's pianos ; but German pianos are cheap, 
 and German agents are many and energetic, 1 and German 
 pianos are landed in England duty free. But the extent 
 of German depredation on our national music-trade cannot 
 be measured by the German names which decorate many 
 of the pianos in English drawing-rooms and places where 
 they sing. Your piano may bear an English name and 
 address, and, the Merchandise Marks Act notwithstanding, 
 be English in little besides. It happens that Messrs. Smith 
 and Jones, of the Old Kent Road, London, sell pianos, 
 inside whose covers their name (as makers) appears in a 
 glory of gilt and nourishing capitals. But the pianos thus 
 described are not made by Messrs. Smith and Jones at all ; 
 they are the product of not the Old Kent Road but the 
 Saxon Yogtland ; and almost the sole difference between 
 them and genuine Germans is that they come over in bits, 
 and Germans do not. Messrs. Smith and Jones put those 
 bits together, and to that extent are makers ; so that, in 
 effect, Messrs. Smith and Jones are German agents in 
 disguise. 2 
 
 So much for the nationality of English musical instru- 
 ments. As for the English Export in '84 it was worth 
 but 265,414, and by '95 it had got down to 159,293, of 
 which latter sum the German proportion amounted to 
 9,813. Contrast with these the figures (given above) of 
 the English Import ! To amplify my statistics : In '86 
 
 1 In India the presence has been remarked of great numbers of 
 German fitters and tuners, who all push the German article with 
 vigour and success. 
 
 2 The reader need not look for Messrs. Smith and Jones in the 
 London Directory. They have many aliases. 
 
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 125 
 
 the German Export of pianos alone had a value of 740,000 ; 
 ten years later the figures stood at 1,054,000 j and for 
 last year you must add 733,000 for musical toys, and 
 980,050 for divers kinds of musical instruments. 1 The 
 German Trade is afflicted with a chronic tendency to 
 grumbling ; yet the figures for '95 are big increases on 
 those for '94. It matters not what country we take as 
 test : the result is always the same. Germany commands 
 the market, and extends her dominion with each year. In 
 Chili, for example, twenty years ago her part was merely 
 insignificant ; now the market is in her hands. Her export 
 of musical instruments into Finland more than doubled in 
 four years, and as far back as '88 she supplied six-sevenths 
 of the musical instruments used in that country. Yet 
 more pitiable from an English standpoint is the manner in 
 which she " scoops " the Australasian trade. New Zealand 
 imported 534 pianos in '92 : 446 of them came from 
 Germany; Great Britain shared the remaining 88 with 
 other countries. The British manufacturers labour under 
 the not unnatural delusion that new and sparsely populated 
 agricultural colonies are not customers worth cultivating. 
 It is a delusion, nevertheless. In '91, when the whole 
 population of West Australia numbered only 55,000, the 
 colony imported musical instruments to the value of 
 6,639. These were mostly German : the British contri- 
 bution being so small that it is ignored by the Board of 
 Trade Returns. The rest of Australia is in the same way. 
 A German Consular Report states that several of the 
 Melbourne musical instrument houses deal exclusively in 
 German goods, two reasons being given: (1) moderate 
 price ; (2) sedulous regard/or the wishes of buyers in the 
 matter of construction and ornamentation. This regard 
 for the buyer is not always admirable in kind. The buyer's 
 
 1 This class is very heterogeneous. Stringed instruments form a 
 big proportion ; but musical cbairs, musical tables, and even musical 
 bedsteads and the like weird devices, are items in the list. 
 
126 MADE JN GERMANY 
 
 wish is often concentrated on low prices, and the German 
 maker is complacent in this respect also. He is quite 
 willing to supply at a lower figure than a decent instru- 
 ment can be sold at and the instrument he supplies is in 
 no sense a decent one. 
 
 Europe tells the same tale. Nearly all the musical 
 instruments bought in Roumania come from Germany ; 
 England hasn't a look in. Austria and France once held 
 the market there, but even they have given way before the 
 invincible German. France, indeed, seems as little able to 
 resist him as ourselves; and the Swiss trade, once her 
 monopoly, has passed into his hands. Investigating this 
 phenomenon the Swiss Chamber of Commerce ascribed it to 
 the adaptability of the German maker, who does his best 
 to meet such requirements in taste as his customers may 
 state. Another of its reports asserts that " no dealer can 
 now do without the German article, which was formerly 
 quite different." Notwithstanding severe native com- 
 petition and heavy Protective Duties, the United States, 
 too, is all a- tinkle with German pianos ; and it is worth 
 noting that the German Government allowed all exhibits 
 intended for the Chicago Exposition to travel on the State 
 Lines free of cost, while the German Shipping Companies 
 followed suit by materially reducing their ocean-freights. 
 Similar in kind is the annual subvention (1,000 marks) 
 which is paid by the Saxon Government for the purchase 
 of models, &c, to the Trade Museum of Markneukirchen, 
 an institution established for the express purpose of 
 furthering the Musical Instrument Trade there. They 
 don't do these things in England. 
 
 It will be unpleasant news to Englishmen that German 
 factories are largely run with English money ; but we have 
 it on the authority of a trade journal, 1 that English 
 capitalists are not backward in making such investments 
 
 1 Musical Opinion and Music Trade Review, 1st August, '90. 
 
PRINTING 127 
 
 whenever required for the establishment of new firms and 
 factories." 
 
 To sum up : it was estimated in '90 (I do not vouch for 
 the figures), that the world's consumption of pianos reached 
 200,000 a year, and that 72,000 of them were made in 
 Germany. It is an enormous figure when you consider the 
 length of service which most pianos perform ; but if it 
 were accurate for '90, the returns required for '95 and for 
 the current year would be more disgusting still. 
 
 Printing 
 
 For a final instance I would refer you to the Printing 
 and Allied Trades. These also are under the blight. The 
 Export of Printed Books is a very modern trade ; yet our 
 part in it is shrinking. In '91, the value of our Export of 
 Printed Books was 1,388,669; in '95 it was 1,232,946. 
 In the former year, 52,208 worth went to Germany, and 
 three years later only 42,451 worth. Need I add that the 
 position is reversed in the case of the German Export 1 
 Under the head of " Biicher, Karten, Musikalien," you find 
 recorded an Export Value of 30,100,000 marks in '85, and 
 an Export Value of 52,478,000 marks in '95. Again, of 
 " Farbendruckbilder, Kupferstiche, &c," the Export was 
 worth 21,800,000 marks in '85, and 46,143,000 marks in 
 '95. Here is another comparative instance : the German 
 Export to England of " Literarische und Kunstgegen- 
 st'ande," was in '94 worth 21,571,000 marks ; the German 
 Import from England under the same heading in the same 
 year was worth only 2,496,000 marks. Proceeding on the 
 English computation, we find that the German import 
 from England of Stationery other than paper was worth 
 82,990 in '91, and 76,408 in '95. 
 
 "What is the moral of these figures % The facts they 
 
128 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 disclose are, that our own Export is gradually dwindling, 
 while German Export is going up by leaps and bounds. 
 There is but too much reason ; and it may be stated in the 
 two words " inferior workmanship " j for this, so far as I 
 have been able to gather, is the chief cause of England's 
 inability to hold her own. So far as printing in general 
 is concerned, a Member of Parliament, who is largely 
 interested in the trade, gave me four reasons more : (1) 
 superior education ; (2) the stupid conservatism of the 
 English Trade Unionist ; (3) the ditto ditto of the English 
 Master-Printer; and (4) the suicidal jealousy of the 
 English Typefounder. 'Tis a fairly formidable list of 
 sins, and will account for much. With respect to the 
 fourth, the same gentleman informed me that our type- 
 founders deliberately make their types in such a way that 
 one firm's will not fit into another's ; the idea being that 
 a printer, once he begins to deal with them, will have to do 
 so ever after. But the Foreign Typefounder is vastly less 
 cunning j so to him the English Printer goes. A gentle- 
 man connected with the London Trade assures me that 
 good work (he was alluding in particular to bookbinding 
 and lithography) cannot be got outside the Continent. Tired 
 of paying bills to Foreign Houses, he has placed orders at 
 home ; but ever with disastrous results. The English work 
 is scamped, clumsily finished, late in delivery, and expen- 
 sive. The Dutch and German work is none of these 
 things. " Look," my informant said, " at the factory girls 
 coming out of a printing works on the Continent tidy, 
 clean, smart, and neatly dressed ; and compare them with 
 the horde of girls trooping from an English printer's 
 frowsy, tousled, and untidy ! There you have the explana- 
 tion. The appearance of the girls in the streets shows 
 clearly their fashion of work inside the factory." 
 
 The German, Dutch, and Flemish workers take pride in 
 their work, and bestow great pains upon its details ; and 
 
PRINTING 129 
 
 obviously, in such industries as these, attention to detail 
 is of the very essence of good work. It follows that, so 
 long as national characteristics exist as they are, England 
 must remain in the background. The best she can hope 
 for is the spread of good schooling in industrial art. Then, 
 when her workers are more or less adequately trained, and 
 have come to take a pride in seemly results, more pros- 
 perous times may ensue, and Christmas cards designed in 
 England the English designs are the best will not need 
 to be sent to Germany to get decently printed. Already, 
 indeed, there are signs of improvement. Last Christmas, 
 several among the " presentation plates " were printed in 
 England, instead of, as hitherto, in Germany. So there is 
 hope. But that hope will not be largely realised until the 
 damnable phrase, " It's good enough," ceases to be the 
 British Workman's shibboleth. 
 
 Here ends the tale of England's industrial shame. 
 
VII 
 
 Why Germany beats us 
 
 At the risk of a charge of " damnable iteration," it 
 will be well to set out the causes of German success in a 
 separate section. I shall endeavour to make it as ex- 
 haustive as my limits will allow. 
 
 Wages and Hours of Labour 
 
 I put this cause first, not because I believe it to be the 
 principal explanation of German success, but because in the 
 minds of most Englishmen Cheap German Labour ade- 
 quately explains their country's failure to withstand the 
 encroachments of German Industrialism. In spite of 
 statistics, it is no easy matter to make accurate comparisons 
 between the rates of wages paid in Germany and in 
 England. In both countries substantial variations exist 
 in the wages paid for similar work in different districts. 
 The London shipwright, for example, demands a higher 
 rate than his mate in Glasgow. The Westphalian iron- 
 worker is remunerated on a more generous scale than 
 the Silesian. Local variation has much to do with the 
 conflicting statements on the Wages Question which have 
 become frequent since the recent awakening of some of our 
 countrymen to the fact that even the Cheap German 
 Labour argument must have its foundation tested. A con- 
 
WAGES AND HOURS OF LABOUR 131 
 
 spicuous instance of this disagreement among doctors is the 
 opposite character of the conclusions come to by the delega- 
 tion of the British Iron Trade Association and the Foreign 
 Competition Committee of the Wolverhampton Chamber 
 of Commerce. The official report of the Iron Trade 
 Association, recognising the difficulty, declined to pro- 
 nounce an opinion; but the unofficial utterances of some 
 of the delegates indicated the superiority, rather than 
 the inferiority, of German wages over English in many 
 departments of the Iron and Steel Trades. The Wolver- 
 hampton Committee, on th e other hand, roundly asserted 
 that English workers were much better paid than 
 German, and compiled comparative tables in support 
 of the assertion. In regard however to this report it 
 is well to remember that it was to the interest of the Com- 
 mittee, which represented the masters only, to prove the 
 relative highness of English Wages. I do not mean to say 
 that it deliberately took the highest German and the 
 lowest English rates for comparison, but 'tis exceedingly 
 unlikely that it achieved the herculean task of arriving 
 at an exact average of the rates in force in every part of 
 each country. What we do know, so far as the Iron and 
 Steel Trades are concerned, is that the difference between 
 English and German wages is very much less than was at 
 one time taken for granted, and that, comparing the rate 
 of pay in some important German works with those 
 obtaining in equally important English works, the differ- 
 ence practically disappears. But I have already dealt with 
 the subject of wages in this industry in my Second 
 Chapter, 1 and I will burden my readers with no further 
 remarks. 
 
 But suppose we allow that, viewed generally, German 
 wages are lower and German hours of labour are longer 
 than English : does it follow that these things are an 
 1 See page 41. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 effective cause of German success % They are a very 
 obviously effective cause, and for that reason w e are p r one to 
 accept them as the origin of our defeat. Reflection wjJLsiiQW 
 that they are not necessarily an effective cause. Belgian 
 wages in the Mining and Iron Trades rule lower than German. 
 Yet Belgium complains more of German competition than 
 does Germany of Belgian. The wages of New York printers 
 are higher than those of London printers, yet they turn out 
 cheaper work. The shortening of the hours of labour not 
 infrequently results in increased productivity : there is 
 more energy in the worker, and his labour is more intense 
 when the period of it is shorter. German wages, too, are 
 rising, and German hours are lessening. Yet Germany 
 is still accelerating her march. While, therefore, I do 
 not commit myself to the assertion that low wages and 
 long hours do not at times play a part in the cheaper cost 
 of foreign production, I do feel it important to beg my 
 readers not to lay too great a stress on the point. No one is 
 likely to minimise its effects ; but there is great danger of 
 making too much of it, and neglecting other causes, the 
 wholesome contemplation of which is likely to have more 
 fruitful results than can accrue from a continued appeal 
 to English workers to work longer and ask less wages. 
 
 Strikes 
 
 Here you have another alleged cause of German success, 
 and I place this also early in my list, not because of its 
 intrinsic importance, but because it is an alleged cause. 
 Many people assert that the prevalence of strikes in England 
 is one of the main, if not the main, reason why England's 
 industrial supremacy is waning. To make such an 
 assertion is to weaken a good cause by violence of 
 statement. It is obvious to the most superficial observer 
 that strikes and lock-outs are in their nature harmful to 
 the trade in which they occur, and it is in this very obvious- 
 
STRIKES 133 
 
 ness that the danger lies : the temptation to rate it too high 
 is great. We were told when the big coal-strike (or, more 
 properly, lock-out) was in progress, that the foreign trade, 
 suspended temporarily, would be lost for ever. But English 
 coal was pouring into foreign ports as soon as work was 
 resumed in the pits. Nor did the big mining strike in 
 Westphalia put any permanent check on the industrial 
 advance of that district. 
 
 Having said so much in the interests of moderate state- 
 ment, let me join the chorus of those who deplore the 
 frequency of strikes and lock-outs in this country. They 
 are not unknown, be it remembered, in Germany; but 
 England's acquaintance with them is more intimate. As a 
 check to over-production these labour struggles sometimes 
 serve a certain good purpose : the mischief is that the check 
 is only local, now that rival industrial communities have 
 started up all over the globe. While stocks in England 
 are being reduced, the output is being maintained (often 
 accelerated) abroad ; so that there is a dead loss to English 
 capitalists and workers, without any compensating rise in 
 price or steadying in production. And, so far as Germany 
 is concerned, we have to contend with an extremely 
 vigilant and zealous rival. As soon as the gates of 
 our English works are locked, the German rushes into 
 the suspended market, to fill up the vacancy. It is 
 perhaps the chance which he has been awaiting for 
 years; the necessary introduction is obtained, and he 
 gives proof that he has come to stay. Mr. William Jacks, 
 in a Presidential Address to the British Iron Trade 
 Association, said : " I do not remember a strike since I was 
 engaged in business that has not resulted in the loss to our 
 industries of some market, and that market it has always 
 been difficult and often impossible to regain." There is 
 probably an exaggerated pessimism in this statement. 
 Nevertheless, it is well to be roundly told sometimes of 
 
134 MADE IN' GERMANY 
 
 the ever-present danger of the German stealing into the 
 market, and getting a custom for his wares in the corner 
 temporarily vacated by the English attendants, who have 
 gone outside to fight. 
 
 Cheap and Nasty Goods 
 
 Now I come to the third popular explanation of German 
 success. There is a fine insular contempt about the phrase 
 endearing it to the Briton, who, in enforced idleness, 
 plunges his hands into his depleted pockets, and gazes 
 wrathfully at the extension of his rival's premises. Yet 
 it is not an insular product : it also was made in 
 Germany. "Billig und Schnell " was the verdict bestowed 
 by a candid German on some of his country's products 
 which he had seen abroad, and one is disposed to wonder 
 that with such an ugly and a widely circulated advertisement 
 German merchandise makes any progress whatever in the 
 markets of the world. Englishmen should be thankful for 
 the unenviable name which their rival's goods have obtained. 
 Apart however from its fitness or unfitness as a designa- 
 tion of German manufactures, it is scarce an expression to 
 cherish. It has a flavour of the enraged gutter-child, 
 which does not recommend it for use in serious inves- 
 tigation. Yet it is as common as that other phrase 
 "Made in Germany" to which it serves as universal pen- 
 dant. In view of the obvious fact that German goods are 
 bought, not because they are nasty, but because they are 
 cheap, the phrase, as an explanation of German success, 
 will run better as " Cheap, but Nasty." 
 
 A word as to the depreciatory adjective. I have in 
 earlier chapters discussed the respective merits of typical 
 English and German wares, and my readers will by this 
 time be aware that while "Cheap and Nasty German Stuff " 
 is not an altogether unjustifiable insult, yet the justifiable 
 
CHEAP AND NASTY GOODS 135 
 
 application of the term is very partial, and must be used 
 with a sparing and a discerning tongue. That German 
 goods are cheaper than English is practically true all round, 
 though diligent students may dig up a few exceptions : 
 that they are nasty is true of a portion only, and a 
 dwindling portion. In the minds of many there is an 
 unthinking inference that, because German goods are some- 
 times fifty per cent, less in price than English, therefore 
 they are fifty per cent, less in value. This may or may not 
 be true in particular instances ; but there is no inevitable 
 sequence between Nasty and Cheap . Some German manu- 
 factures remain inferior because of climatic conditions 
 as Linen Yarns ; but this disadvantage, which is only of 
 importance in Fine Yarns, may at any time be rectified by 
 the introduction of humidified air into the rooms where the 
 yarns are spun. Other German wares have been less valu- 
 able than English, owing to the use of inferior machinery, 
 but that drawback may now be regarded as ancient history. 
 It is safe, at any rate, to assert that the last remnants of it are 
 disappearing. Here, again, the Linen Trade may be cited as 
 an example. So desirous are the Continental spinners of 
 contending on equal terms with their Belfast rivals, that 
 they eagerly import the latest improvements in machinery, 
 and thereby often get ahead of the Irishmen. Similarly, 
 as I have already pointed out, in the Iron and Steel 
 Trades the Germans can now beat us in the matter of 
 machinery. Another cause of G erman inferiority was lack 
 of knowledge ; and this drawback also the Germans have 
 diligen tly repaired. They have imported Englis h men into 
 their works to teach them how to manufacture in the best 
 English style ; they have come to England to learn our 
 methods on the spot ; they have educated themselves with 
 such matchless industry that the technical knowledge of a 
 German worker is far and away better than that of an 
 Englishman in a similar position. In respect of the counter 
 
136 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 proposition : that German goods have often excellences 
 which similar English manufactures lack : I have had some- 
 what to say in previous chapters. That people buy German 
 goods because of their cheapness is sufficiently palpable ; 
 and the mass of the people must buy in a cheap market. 
 The purchasing power is hard to obtain, and by the vast 
 majority is only obtained in niggardly quantities : and 
 is dissipated over the satisfaction of multifarious needs. A 
 more pertinent enquiry is : Why are German goods so 
 cheap? The answer will, I hope, become plain in the 
 course of this section. For the moment I would impress 
 on the reader the importance of getting well home in his 
 mind the fact that there are reasons f n rGgr 5H- -C h pp I PBg 
 apart from low wages and scamped workmanship. . Also, 
 that cheapness is not the sole element in German success. 
 
 The Merchandise Marks Act 
 
 The Merchandise Marks Act of 1887, which introduced 
 the familiar stamp, is another alleged cause of successful 
 German competition. The people to declaim loudest 
 against it are those connected with Shipping and Trading 
 (as distinguished from Manufacturing) interests. Manu- 
 facturers also may be found to join in the outcry, but 
 to a less extent ; and hostility from that quarter is provo- 
 cative of suspicion. Other Manufacturers, especially those 
 whose headquarters are in Hallamshire, are loud in praise 
 of the Act, and the complaint of many producers is that the 
 Act does not go far enough. Many persons, too, criticise 
 the method in which the Act is worked ; and many others 
 a legion these simply don't understand the Act at all. 
 Let us glance therefore at such provisions of a much- 
 praised and much abused measure as affect the present 
 subject. 
 
 The Merchandise Marks Act of '87 was passed to super- 
 
THE MERCHANDISE MARKS ACT 137 
 
 sede the Act of '62, a measure much more limited in scope, 
 designed to check the forging of trade-marks, the labelling c 
 of false quantities, and similar methods of commercial 
 thievery, but having no special reference to the depreda- 
 tions of German manufacturers. The Act of '87 delibe- 
 rately attacked these last, and their aiders and abettors in 
 England. It enacted, among other things, that every 
 person who applied any false trade description to goods, or 
 sold goods so described, should be held guilty of an offence 
 under the Act punishable by fine or imprisonment, with 
 or without hard labour, for a period not exceeding two 9 
 years, besides forfeiting the offending merchandise to Her 
 Majesty. " Trade description," was declared to mean an 
 indication (inter alia) of the place or country in which the 
 goods were made ; " false trade description " to include 
 every such alteration of a description, whether by addition, 
 effacement, or otherwise, as should render the description 
 false in a material respect. That is to say, it is a penal 
 offence to sell an article made abroad which has upon it 
 any word or mark leading the purchaser to believe that it 
 is made in England, in the absence of other words denoting 
 the real place of origin. The mug which is A Present 
 from Margate, is a familiar illustration. When it is made 
 in Germany, the mug must state so much, lest the unwary 
 excursionist should bear his gift home in triumph over the 
 discovery of a native school of pottery adjoining the Hall 
 by the Sea. The Act also entertains a prejudice against 
 the stamping of a Sheffield name and address on a knife 
 made in Saxony. But it does not ordain that every 
 article made abroad shall bear a legend to that effect, 
 and many wares matches, for example are stamped 
 quite unnecessarily. There is an exception in the case 
 of watches. The person bringing a watch-case to an 
 English Assay Office, must declare the place of manufacture ; 
 and if it be a foreign product the Assay Office puts a 
 
138 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 distinctive mark on the case. On the other hand, the Act is 
 persistently and largely evaded. There are two principal 
 methods of doing this. One is to stamp the package instead 
 of the article (foreign-made files, for example, have come 
 to England in boxes which were marked fully enough, but 
 the files themselves were not stamped, and were sold as 
 English); the other, to send the article over in pieces, 
 and have it made up in England. This is done with 
 pianos and cycles to a large extent with cycles to a grow- 
 ing extent. Another trick is to place the stamp where 
 v it is practically invisible. One German firm, which exports 
 to England large numbers of sewing-machines, conspi- 
 cuously labelled " Singers," and "North-British Sewing 
 Machines," places the Made in Germany stamp in small 
 letters underneath the treadle. Half a dozen seamstresses 
 might combine their strength to turn the machine bottom- 
 upwards, and read the legend : otherwise it would go 
 unread. 
 
 This is, shortly, the Act which vexes the souls of Cham- 
 bers of Commerce, and makes food for denunciatory 
 paragraphs in trade-journals. The best argument against 
 it is that it operates as a free advertisement of German 
 manufactures. The colonial buyer (to take an instance) 
 sends orders to England for goods. He receives these 
 orders stamped " Made in Germany." Obviously, he says, 
 the English middleman has made a profit; and he may 
 add, "I will purchase direct from the German houses, 
 and save the commission." On his next journey to 
 Europe, he divides his stay between England and Ger- 
 many. Having gone to Germany for one class of goods, 
 he is made acquainted with the virtues and prices of 
 others, and being on the spot, he purchases things 
 he would otherwise have bought in England. So the 
 English loss is extended beyond the particular German- 
 made article which the Merchandise Marks Act pointed 
 
THE MERCHANDISE MARKS ACT 139 
 
 out, and our Colonial purchases wares in Germany which, 
 had he bought in England, would have been genuine 
 English manufactures. In like manner, as the Act has 
 fostered direct trade between English retail sellers and 
 German manufacturers, England is being flooded with 
 German agents for the sale of these manufactures, who, 
 being on the spot, improve the occasion to offer other 
 German-made wares. This is the strongest card the 
 detractors of the Act have to play. The conflicting 
 opinions raging around its merits will be found to resolve 
 themselves finally into a case of Manufacturer v. Trader. 
 Sheffield sees in the Act a protection against German 
 cutlers : London, a blow at her trading interests. London 
 gets rich in sale commissions on German manufactures, and 
 she likes not the introduction of direct trading, which as 
 she claims is fostered by the Act. So long as she has only 
 this point of view to urge, her appeal to English patriotism 
 is hampered by its limitations ; for if the manufacturing in- 
 terests of the Midlands and the North and of Ulster and 
 Scotland are greater than the trading interests of mercan- 
 tile London and the shipping companies, sympathy with 
 London and the shipping companies must perforce be tepid 
 by comparison. But when London urges that, indirectly, 
 English manufacture as well as English trade is hit by the 
 Act, she essays a more formidable argument. But London 
 has no data wherewith to support her contention. The 
 London Chamber of Commerce has tried to collect them, 
 but the attempt has failed. I cannot see how the Chamber 
 could have hoped for success, even were its contention 
 fully right. Such a cause of commercial decline must 
 remain a matter of surmise, and I think that the argument 
 of damage to English manufactures cannot, having regard 
 to the probabilities of the case, be received with much con- 
 cern. The English mercantile interest undoubtedly suffers 
 under the Act ; but, so far as the Act goes which after all 
 
140 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 is not. far it would seem that it cannot be other than a 
 distinct advantage to English manufacturers, whose wares 
 have hitherto enjoyed a world-wide reputation for superi- 
 ority over those of other nations. Yet, considering how 
 limited the Act is in its operation, it cannot be regarded as a 
 matter of very great importance either way in a discussion 
 on the growth of German at the expense of English manu- 
 facture. The most telling practical criticism seems to be 
 that either the Act is not wanted at all, or it does not 
 go far enough, as it provides for the marking of a por- 
 tion only of the foreign manufactures imported into this 
 country. 1 Whatever its merits or demerits, it has had 
 one good effect : it has called public attention to the evil 
 which Germans are working upon English manufacturers. 
 And anyway it makes for honesty : there is no reason 
 why even a nation of shop-keepers should be also a nation 
 of liars. 
 
 State Help 
 
 Protection 
 
 Here, at last, we are upon firm ground : whatever the 
 other causes of Germany's success, it cannot be doubted 
 that thi s is one of them, and a potent one,. In the preced- 
 ing chapters I have made incidental reference to the 
 matter, and it may be said that no more words are 
 necessary to show the obvious evils wrought upon our 
 commerce by the fiscal policy of our rivals. To some readers 
 the mere mention of Protection in this chapter will be 
 sufficient : it is so self-evident a cause. But the blind 
 
 1 At the time ot going to press there is a" bill before the 
 House of Commons to amend the Merchandise Marks Act. It 
 provides for the marking of all imported goods, except .such as may 
 be specially exempted by the Commissioners of Customs,; on thet 
 ground that they are incapable of being marked. But this is only a 
 private Member's bill, and shows no signs of escaping the normal fate 
 of measures of that class. 
 
STATE HELP 141 
 
 devotion of numbers of well-informed and intelligent men 
 to the Free Trade fetish (I do not wish to be cheaply- 
 contemptuous, but the thing has become a fetish) 
 prompts me to summarise the reasons why Protective 
 Tariffs in Germany have injured English Industry. 
 Put shortly, the position is this : The fact that Eng- 
 lish goods entering Germany (the same is, of course, 
 true of other foreign countries, and also, alas ! of 
 British Possessions) have to pay a toll at the port of 
 debarkation, adds to the cost of production of those goods 
 when they are offered for sale to the German consumer. His 
 desire is to buy in the cheapest market. If a German 
 enters into competition with the English manufacturer to 
 supply the German consumer's demand, he is freed from 
 this item in the cost of production, and is advantaged 
 thereby. Thus, there is offered to the Germans a strong 
 inducement to enter into competition in industries insig- 
 nificant or unborn. England may be in a more favourable 
 position in some respects ; so that without this artificial aid 
 the German might not have thought it worth while to 
 compete. But the aid acts as stimulus in the case of modern 
 Germany, madly in love with Industrialism, and vigorous 
 to pursue her love, with sufficient stimulus to the found- 
 ing and progress of manufactures which might otherwise 
 have been non-existent or of no account. And of course 
 the aid acts with equal benefit on industries already 
 flourishing. The German manufacturer makes whatever 
 reduction in price may be necessary to oust his English 
 rival; and the English rival is soon by way of being 
 ousted. That is one way in which Protection against 
 English goods harms English trade. 
 
 There are others. The German Tariff System enables 
 German manufacturers to flood England with German goods. 
 In this way, German manufacturers, with a Protected home- 
 market, can charge their home-customers such prices as will 
 
142 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 make them a profit ; the overplus can then conveniently be 
 sent abroad, and sold at a lower rate at the cost of produc- 
 tion, if necessary. Indeed, German goods are often sold out- 
 side Germany at a price which is beneath the cost of produc- 
 tion, for the purpose of forcing a way into the market. This 
 puts the English manufacturer at a disadvantage in his 
 own home-market ; for in most classes of goods the freight 
 from Germany is too low to redress the balance. In like 
 manner, Germany injures England in the neutral markets 
 of the world. Lacking a protected home-market and having 
 to meet a cut -throat competition from Germany, the 
 English manufacturer has no chance of making his profit 
 on high-priced goods for home-consumption, nor that corre- 
 lative ability to sell cheap in the export trade which the 
 German has ; and he thus meets his rival in neutral 
 markets heavily handicapped. So England suffers a double 
 loss from Germany's Protective System : the Germans shut 
 her out of Germany by hostile tariffs ; and by the 
 advantages accruing therefrom to German manufacturers 
 she is badly disadvantaged in other markets, including her 
 own home-market. This is not controversy, but a state- 
 ment of simple fact ; and surely the most >enthusiastic 
 free-trader cannot take exception to it. 
 
 A clashing of German Protection and English Free-Trade^ 
 with the disadvantageous position imposed thereby on the 
 Englishman, crops up in a number of directions. Here is 
 an instance which was brought before the notice of the 
 Bradford Chamber of Commerce. When the Zanzibar 
 Protectorate declared Zanzibar a free port, in order to 
 preserve from the imposition of double duties the trade 
 passing thence into Germany, the German Government put 
 a 10 per cent, duty on goods imported through Zanzibar, 
 whereas on goods imported direct the duty was only 
 6 \ per cent. As a consequence, orders for goods which 
 would otherwise be placed in England go to Germany ;. 
 
STATE HELP 143 
 
 thus defeating the hope inspired by the acquisition of our 
 East African territories, that new markets would be opened 
 where our trade would be unhampered by the hostile 
 tariffs confronting it everywhere else. But Protection in 
 Germany is no longer of the rigid autonomous type which 
 prevailed under Bismarck. A more elastic policy has 
 been adopted. Germany finds out the particular markets 
 she wishes to secure in a foreign country, and says to 
 that country : " Give us reductions on the Tariff you are 
 imposing on these goods, and in return we will make 
 concessions with respect to the merchandise you send 
 to us." With most nations she has now contracted 
 these treaties, and the results have been more than 
 satisfactory to her Export Trade. For further illus- 
 tration, I shall refer my reader to what I have written 
 respecting the Busso-German Tariff Treaty. 1 Of course, 
 Germany pays for the advantages of this system by a loss 
 of revenue, estimated by Sir Charles Oppenheimer at 
 40,000,000 marks a year. But, from the point of view of 
 her Export Trade, the sacrifice does not appear to be 
 too great. 
 
 Under the Most-Favoured-Nation Clause England gets 
 the same tariff reductions as Germany in any treaty which 
 the latter country may make ; but this does not imply 
 such entire commercial equality as would appear. When 
 Germany is negotiating a treaty, she arranges for such 
 reductions as will be specially beneficial to her own trade j 
 and it by no means follows, as our Consuls are too apt to 
 hold, that the articles on which the most useful reductions 
 are made are those in which England has an equal 
 interest. Germany, indeed, has shown herself anxious to 
 avoid reductions to herself when England would receive 
 a greater benefit thereby. I gave an instance of this 
 policy when discussing the Kussian Treaty. 
 1 See page 13. 
 
144 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 Bounties and Subsidies 
 
 I have hitherto excluded food-stuffs from considera- 
 tioo, although there is at least one branch of this 
 division of commerce in which the Germans have hit us 
 with appalling force. I refer to Sugar. The subject makes 
 a capital illustration of that off-shoot of Protection, the 
 ^granting of Bounties on Home-Made Goods. This is briefly 
 how the system is worked. Beetroot entering a German 
 fabrique was officially weighed, and paid excise duty on the 
 weight. When the Sugar was manufactured, a draw- 
 * back was granted on the duty in respect of such of it as 
 was declared for Export : the Government arriving at the 
 amount of the drawback by calculating that a certain 
 quantity of roots would yield a certain quantity of Sugar. 
 The Fabricant and the Farmer in consequence addressed 
 themselves, and with great success, to the improvement of 
 the manufacturing process and of the root-cultivation, so 
 that now the roots yield a great deal more sugar than the 
 Government calculation estimated. This Indirect Bounty 
 was altered in '92 to a Direct Bounty, on the quantity 
 of Sugar exported : the new system involving less 
 drain on the German tax-payer. The Reichstag has 
 this year re-enacted the Bounty on a doubled scale, 
 and British Refining is at its last gasp. 
 
 Similar in principle and effect is the Subsidy System which 
 prevails in Germany. It is granted to steamship lines, in 
 addition to the sums paid for the carriage of mails, and 
 takes the form of a Government guarantee of interest on 
 capital. It is also extensively in operation on the railways. 
 But this matter belongs to a separate section. 
 
STATE HELP 145 
 
 Transport 
 
 Undoubtedly cheaper transport is a powerful factor in 
 the success attending German commerce, and it is the sub- 
 ject of frequent and bitter complaint against the English 
 railway companies. It is, however, unfair to those com- 
 panies, as well as making against a right understanding of 
 the matter, to parade the often startling differences between 
 English and Continental railway rates, and omit the ex- 
 planation. There are of course a number of explanations ; 
 but the vital point to bear in mind is, that the lowness 
 of German railway charges has its origin in State-aid. 
 German lines are owned and worked by the Government, 
 and they form in consequence a public service. It matters 
 not so much therefore whether they earn a big profit or no 
 profit at all. Their primary function is to serve the public 
 interest ; whether the financial statement of the Minister 
 of Railways shows a balance or a deficit is, after all, only a 
 matter of incidence of taxation : the public pay, in any 
 event, either in railway rates or in taxes. Now, the German 
 Government desires to forward the industrial progress of 
 the State ; it therefore favours that section of the public 
 which is concerned with the shipping of home-made goods, 
 and particularly favours manufactures destined for Export. 
 Thus it is that comparative tables of railway-rates to 
 shipping-ports in England and Germany respectively are 
 paraded with much vituperative comment in trade journals, 
 for the purpose of showing that the German rates on Ex- 
 port Goods are less than half those ruling in England. The 
 facts are all right ; but the explanation robs them of their 
 force in the argument they are meant to illustrate. 
 
 A recent reduction of freight in Germany may be quoted 
 as an instance of how the thing is done. Enormous quan- 
 tities of English coal are sent to Swinemunde (for Stettin) 
 and the other Baltic ports, and to stop this import the 
 German Government, in February '96, reduced the railway 
 
 L 
 
146 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 rates on coal from the Silesian fields to the same ports by 
 , 2s. 9d. a ton. The Act shows scant regard for the German 
 tax-payer and for the prosperity of the Baltic ports ; but it , 
 is a deadly blow to English collieries. Thus is native 
 industry encouraged ! The German State, indeed, is 
 i always ready to lend a helping hand to a Germ;! 1 
 industry. As further examples may be quoted the 
 substantial reductions in the freight from Bremen 
 on cotton on the Austrian and Saxon lines, inaugurated in 
 '93 ; also the fact that German manufactures going 
 to Chicago for the great Exhibition, were carried free 
 on the State Railways. Again, the advantages in cheap 
 ocean freights enjoyed by maritime countries are 
 counteracted by specially low railway rates for overland 
 transit, granted for the purpose, on the State railways of 
 Germany. This arrangement hits England hard. It may, 
 however, be parenthetically mentioned that the system is 
 not always carried far enough to be successful. Thus, an 
 order for several thousand tons of rails for the Sofia-Roman 
 Railway of Bulgaria went to a British firm, because the 
 maritime freight from England was too low to allow of 
 German competitors with overland transit underbidding 
 the English tender. But this case is an exception to the 
 rule ; and I am quoting it as an additional proof that cheap 
 freight is a vital factor in the success of an industry. 
 
 Now as to English railway rates. These are higher than 
 the German^much" higher, and, despite Railway and 
 1 Canal Traffic Acts and traders' agitations, will remain much 
 higher, so long as the present Railway System endures. 
 English railways are run by private capitalists with the one 
 object of extracting dividends. It is a legitimate com- 
 mercial object, and the only point of difference between 
 railway companies and traders is that railways are in the 
 nature of monopolies : monopolies whose integrity is 
 guaranteed by Parliament ; for the Legislature is slow to 
 grant powers to a competing company if the district is 
 
STATE HELP 147 
 
 already efficiently served. The existence of this practical 
 monopoly does, indeed, justify the trader in demanding that 
 it shall not be abused, to the injury of trade, for the pur- 
 pose of securing high dividends. But before attacking 
 the railway companies, we have to answer the question : 
 Are these dividends disproportionately high 1 The answer 
 is made difficult by reason of the widely varying dividends 
 declared by the different companies ; but it is within the 
 mark to say that a very small proportion of the ordinary 
 share capital of English railways earns more than 7 per 
 cent. This, at the present day, is very good interest, but 
 it could scarce be called exorbitant. Many traders make 
 very much less, it is true, but others, even now, make 
 much more. It is obvious, at any rate, that the railway 
 companies, unaided by the State, cannot reduce their rates 
 to anything like the German level without landing them- 
 selves in bankruptcy. The cost of constructing and work- 
 ing railways in England is greater than in Germany, and 
 the English State grants no manner of subsidy to the 
 English companies. This is the explanation of the 
 relative dearness of English railway transport. It does 
 not, alas ! minimise the ugly fact that German manu- 
 facturers (particularly when they are making for foreign 
 markets) get their goods carried at rates so much below 
 those which English manufacturers have to pay, that 
 the cost to produce a German article in neutral markets 
 is from that cause alone less than the cost of its English 
 equivalent. 
 
 Here is another transport advantage which the German 
 manufacturer enjoys. He may get a through-rate for his 
 goods from his inland German town to Delagoa Bay or 
 Smyrna, or any other foreign port, and get the advantage of 
 cheaper transit which a through-rate carries with it, besides 
 the other obvious advantage of a less expenditure of pains. 
 This is impossible in England. If a manufacturer in a 
 Lancashire town were to hand his merchandise to the local 
 
 l 2 
 
148 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 railway goods-agent with a request that it be booked to 
 Zanzibar, that official would probably seek the protection 
 of the nearest policeman from a palpable lunatic. Finally, 
 mention must be made of the big canal system in 
 Germany, which already exists, and is being extensively 
 enlarged. These cheap inland waterways are an invalu- 
 able aid to the manufacturers of heavy goods in the 
 German interior. 
 
 The Englishman is at a disadvantage with his German 
 rival in the sea freight also, and the charges brought 
 against English Shipping Companies are most serious. 
 Here is one, from a Report of the British Iron Trade 
 Association : 
 
 Some British steamers, commencing to load for South America at 
 Bremen and finishing at Liverpool, charge 85. per ton at Bremen, but 
 when they come to Liverpool charge 12s. 6d. and 10 per cent, with 
 5 per cent, returnable, being 5s. l%d. in favour of the foreigner, even 
 for the longer voyage. To Batavia from Amsterdam, goods are charged 
 at 16s. 8d. per ton, which from Liverpool are charged 22s. 6d. and 
 10 per cent. For China, Japan, and even our own Colonies, from the 
 above and other ports, similar differential rates are charged in favour 
 of the foreigners. 
 
 For another very flagrant instance I will ask my 
 reader to turn back to page 36. This prejudicing of 
 English trade has been accounted for by the existence of a 
 Shipping Ring, whose function is to keep up rates against 
 English shippers and lower them in favour of Continental 
 firms. But why the Ring] The better explanation 
 it is an adequate one lies, as Mr. Jeremiah Head has 
 pointed out, in the competition from the Continent of the 
 Subsidised Steamship Lines. These lines have a minimum 
 rate of interest on their capital guaranteed by the State ; 
 and whether laden or empty their steamers are bound to 
 run. It pays them, therefore, to take cargo at a price 
 otherwise unremunerative, if no better can be got. So 
 the rates from Continental ports are brought down ! 
 English shipping companies trading from them have of 
 course to conform to the prevailing rates : when they come 
 
STA TE HELP 149 
 
 to load at English ports, they have not the same kind of 
 competition to meet, and they can, and they do, charge 
 higher rates. 
 
 Consideration of the Transport Advantages enjoyed by 
 the German should be coupled with consideration of the 
 cheaper Dock Accommodation which he possesses. I have 
 dealt with the sad case of the trader at the London Docks 
 in my remarks on the London Drug Trade. 1 
 
 Commercial Consuls. 
 
 It is not my intention to join in that carping 
 criticism of the British Consular Service which is not 
 uncommon in English commercial circles. I have received 
 in the preparation of this book too much help from 
 Consular Reports (supplemented by private correspond- 
 ence) to be disposed to swell an outcry against our 
 representatives abroad. At the same time it must be 
 admitted that the German service takes greater care of its 
 commercial side than does the English. In my first 
 chapter 2 I gave an instance from the German Legation 
 at Chicago of the eagerness and intelligence with which 
 the German Government assists its traders ; and this 
 instance well exemplifies the general view of the German 
 State as to the duties of its representatives abroad. 
 German consuls must not consider it an indignity to act 
 as agents of German commercial houses. It is told of 
 Prince Bismarck himself that when, as Chancellor, he was 
 interviewing a Chinese Ambassador on diplomatic business, 
 he would not let the mandarin depart till he had induced 
 him to place a large contract for steel rails with a 
 German firm. This example from headquarters is dutifully 
 followed. Mr. Graham, in a valuable paper read to the 
 London Chamber of Commerce in '95, illustrated the 
 working of the system in Roumania. At the Bucharest 
 1 See ante p. 94. 2 See p. 14. 
 
150 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 Legation Germany has a complete staff of men, whose 
 duty it is to inquire into every detail of trade in the 
 interests of German manufacturers. If a contract is 
 coming, the Legation sends home word thereof to the 
 Government, so that German engineers and contractors 
 may be ready with their tenders, and in every other 
 possible manner the commercial attache assists the trade 
 of his countrymen. 
 
 The English service is organised on a different footing. 
 It does not altogether reject the policy so successfully 
 carried out by the Germans, but it halts a long way 
 behind. We have Commercial Attaches, but only three for 
 the whole of Europe at Paris, St. Petersburg, and 
 Constantinople ! 1 Our Consuls have much other work to 
 do, and the attention they are able to bestow on 
 merchants and commercial travellers is necessarily cur- 
 tailed, and made subsidiary to other functions. In addition, 
 they are not paid on a scale commensurate with the 
 performance of the extensive duties in connexion with 
 commerce which is exacted of the German Consular Service. 
 But then, the German Government pays its Commercial 
 Consuls better. As Mr. Mundella pointed out to the 
 Sheffield Chamber of Commerce, the Germans spend 800 
 a year on a Consul at Milan, the centre of Italian industry. 
 England has a Vice-Consul only, whose entire emolument 
 is 50 a year, out of which he finds his own stationery ! 
 Our principal Consul is at Florence, where there is no trade. 
 
 There is a good deal of contradictory evidence as to the 
 usefulness of English Consuls to English Trade. The 
 British Trade Journal 2 in an article on Italy, has told its 
 readers that " it is useless to write beforehand to the 
 British Consuls at the towns to be visited by the traveller, 
 as some manufacturers are in the habit of doing. Consuls 
 
 1 Since the first publication of this book the Government has 
 appointed three more commercial attaches. 
 
 2 1st September, 1895. 
 
STATE HELP 151 
 
 never take upon themselves the responsibility of vouching 
 for the financial position of firms." About three weeks 
 before the publication of this article, a report was 
 received at the Foreign Office from the Acting British 
 Consul at Nice, complaining that " few, if any, commercial 
 travellers of English business houses ever visit Nice, and 
 if they do they never come to the Consulate, which is 
 a pity, as in some cases valuable information and assist- 
 ance might be afforded them." These statements are of a 
 certainty conflicting, but of an equal certainty, they point ' 
 to one undoubted source of the retreat of our commerce 
 before that of Germany. 
 
 Add to the above the German Government's Commission 
 to the United States to study the cultivation and manu- 
 facture of cotton on behalf of the German manufacturer, 
 and your list of German State-help to German Industry 
 will be nearly complete. 
 
 Education 
 
 The remaining factor is Education, and it is a factor of 
 prime importance. I place it in the category of State-aids, 
 because though the impulse to learn is an affair of the 
 Individual, the opportunity to learn lies, for the mass of 
 the people, with the State. The attention paid by the 
 State in Germany to Education and particularly to Scien- 
 tific and Technical Education is matter of common know- 
 ledge the world over, though the knowledge has not yet 
 effectually dislodged the notion that the Germans are a 
 people devoted to dreamy philosophy or plodding research 
 into remote by-paths of knowledge ; a people addicted to 
 the piling up of facts of little use to any one, and least of 
 all to their compilers. There are dry-as-dust enthusiasts 
 everywhere, and Germany has her share of them ; but 
 the scientific training of the mass of her people is not 
 dry-as-dust at all. It is severely practical. The Technical 
 Education to be obtained in Germany is thorough, 
 
152 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 and thoroughly scientific; but it is meant for application. 
 Active use, rather than abstract mental improvement, is 
 the main object kept in view ; so it produces, not " superior " 
 shopwalkers and " soulful " governesses, but artisans and 
 engineers of the best class, men who know the why and 
 the wherefore of their work, and do it well. 
 
 In the promotion of the education of its sons the Father- 
 land spares neither pains nor expense. First-rate Technical 
 Colleges are normal adjuncts to the municipalities of 
 "German towns, and their work is supplemented by volun- 
 tary associations. The Central Government also is not 
 unmindful of the overwhelming advantages in the com- 
 mercial struggle-for-life conferred by Specialised Education. 
 For example, the Imperial Government subsidises the 
 Berlin Seminary of Oriental Languages to the tune of 
 2,450 a year, and takes a paternal interest in the 
 Seminary's work ; and the Legislature has made recom- 
 mendations with a view to imparting to students meant for 
 mercantile or industrial life in Asia and Africa the special 
 instruction they need : as a knowledge of commercial 
 relations and statistics, tariffs and money exchanges, &c. 
 
 It is no exaggeration to say that there is not a subject 
 germane to industrial, scientific or commercial training, 
 which is not taught, and taught well, in numbers of schools 
 up and down the German Empire. This training is laid on 
 a sound foundation. German Elementary Education up to 
 the age of fourteen years is compulsory and free, and 
 Secondary Education, which is largely aided by the State, 
 the municipality, and endowments, is practically free also. 
 From the Elementary School the German scholar passes into 
 the Gymnasium, which leads to the University or into the 
 Science Schools, which lead to the Polytechnic, an institution 
 under Government control. A glowing account of these 
 Polytechnics and other Science and Art Schools was brought 
 home by deputations from the Manchester Corporation 
 and the Manchester Technical School, which visited the 
 
STATE HELP 153 
 
 Continent in '91. According to their reports the buildings 
 are "in simple truth, palatial." They describe some 
 of them in detail. I shall borrow by way of illus- 
 tration a reference to the Charlottenburg Polytechnic, 
 which numbers on its teaching staff eighty-six professors, 
 lecturers and assistants, and thirty private tutors, and is 
 most admirably equipped with scientific instruments and 
 every appliance for the prosecution of advanced studies in 
 architecture, structural and mechanical engineering, ship- 
 building, chemistry, metallurgy, and general science. 
 There is a mechanical workshop in connexion, and a 
 library of 52,000 volumes j the chemical laboratories are 
 lavishly fitted ; the buildings, which were erected at a cost 
 of 405,000, are all sumptuously appointed, and expense is 
 practically disregarded. This, remember, in a country which, 
 according to some of our wiseacres, will never seriously 
 compete with England, because she lacks the capital ! 
 
 The German^Polytechnic, however, is a grade above what 
 we usually connote by the term Technical Schools, but 
 schools of lower grade flourish also. Take, for example, 
 the Higher Trade Institute of Chemnitz. This institution 
 serves for type of the schools intended for young men who 
 are ambitious of being foremen or managers in workshops 
 or commercial houses. There the scholar is expected to be, or 
 to have been, working at some special trade. He receives 
 a thorough grounding in the theory and technique of his 
 chosen trade or profession, and the fees amount to only 3 
 a half-year, except in the case of foreigners, who pay 
 double. The fees, of course, pay but a small proportion of 
 the expenses, which are mainly provided by the State. The 
 Manchester delegates were loud in praise of the appoint- 
 ments and arrangements all through the Institute. In the 
 winter of 1890-91 its pupils numbered 770. The population 
 of Chemnitz was only 120,000 ; yet Chemnitz does not 
 appear to be an exceptional town. Such a proportion of 
 students to population is significant. 
 
154 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 Then there are the Weaving Schools. Chemnitz will again 
 serve for example. The School here was founded in 1856 ; 
 the land and the building were given by the town, which also 
 grants 150 a year for maintenance, the State contributing 
 a like amount. The course is for one year, and the fee is 
 13 10s., besides a small sum for materials and books. In 
 return for this outlay the scholar gets practical instruction 
 in weaving, working at every pattern in each loom until he 
 understands the weave, and can work it unassisted. In 
 addition he receives instruction in the theory of the loom, 
 and in drawing and design. 1 
 
 Nor is weaving the only trade scholastically taught in 
 Germany. Builders and Machinists enjoy the like advan- 
 tage. Take, for instance, the school at Stuttgart. It is a 
 separate institution from the Technical High School of the 
 town, and is intended to meet the wants of a poorer class 
 of students. Pupils may enter at the age of fourteen, 
 but at least one half of them have been engaged in actual 
 work in the building trade. Though the fees amount to no 
 more than 36s. per half-year, a tenth of the students are 
 admitted free, and there are Royal Scholarships. "The 
 school," I am quoting from the Manchester Technical 
 School Report, " is practically designed for those engaged 
 in the building trade, for land-surveyors and agents, and 
 for mechanical engineers." Training is supplemented by 
 visits to works, actual surveying, inspection of farms, 
 drainage and hydraulic works. There is an abundant 
 collection of models and appliances, and a library of nearly 
 70,000 volumes. The expenses are about 7,550 a year; 
 about a tenth of which amount is paid by fees, the rest, 
 with the exception of a small subsidy by the town, comiug 
 from the State. 
 
 In all these Technical Schools evening instruction is the 
 exception : a point worth noting, for there seems an opinion 
 
 1 Sec the Manchester Corporation's Report, quoted in the Record of 
 Technical and Secondary Education for March, '92. 
 
STATE HELP 155 
 
 in England that a young man, wearied with the day's work 
 and in need of relaxation, can get the necessary technical 
 training from evening classes. In Germany they are wiser. 
 Yet evening instruction for artisans is not unknown there. 
 An instance of it may be found in the municipal Hand- 
 werker-Schule of Berlin, which teaches drawing and design, 
 especially as applied to industries, and gives apprentices a 
 theoretical knowledge of their crafts at evening classes, the 
 fees ranging from six to twelve shillings per half-year. 
 When the Manchester Corporation Delegates visited Berlin 
 they found no fewer than 2,212 students on the books. 
 
 Lastly, here is another sort of school. The West- 
 phalian Miners' Provident Fund maintains fifteen pre- 
 paratory schools (Bergvorschulen), where a course of 
 instruction of the most useful kind is given. The system 
 comprises a laboratory, which in one year (1894) made 1,809 
 analyses of fire-damp, and 189 complete analyses of coal, 
 besides a number of tests of coke and briquettes, and 
 analyses of iron ore and water. 
 
 Among other attachments to these schools is a mine- 
 heading at Schlake, completly equipped and in regular 
 operation, where many experiments have been made of the 
 action of explosives on mine-gases and coal-dust. Then 
 there is a shaft put down by the pupils, who have also been 
 engaged in making a map cf the Westphalian coal-fields, 
 with a graphic representation of the development of the 
 different mines. 1 
 
 Foreigners are admitted to German Technical Schools 
 on payment of higher fees ; they are also excluded from 
 certain examinations. But in Saxony efforts are being 
 made to get rid of them altogether, which efforts are 
 chiefly directed against Englishmen and Americans. A com- 
 mentary on this German-made patriotism is to be found in 
 Miss Ina C. Davis's Beport on the Manchester Technical 
 School, where she found that a third of the day pupils were 
 1 See Iron and Coal Trades Review, 22nd November, ] 895. 
 
156 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 foreigners, " who, after completing their studies, return to 
 
 their homes and compete with the people who provided them 
 
 their training at 'a nominal cost." Such is the use to 
 
 which our modest attempts at Technical Education are put ! 
 
 I have been tempted to go thus far into detail on the 
 
 subject of German Technical Education (as a fact the 
 
 temptation has been to go still farther) because I wished 
 
 to bring home to my reader the splendid system of 
 
 industrial education which obtains in Germany, a system 
 
 which is an integral factor in Germany's industrial 
 
 success, and which, compared with anything in the nature 
 
 of technical education to be found in England, is as an 
 
 electric lamp to a rush-light. To quote once more from 
 
 the Manchester Corporation's Report : 
 
 It is not a subsidiary portion of educational work nor yet an exotic, 
 but is all -pervading, and is as much a part of the life of the people 
 
 as is elementary education Provision is made at an early stage 
 
 for specialising study with a view to future occupation and the kind of 
 life a youth is destined for. 
 
 Self Help 
 
 JSTow I come to play the part of the candid friend. It is 
 a thankless office ; but my tabulation of the reasons why 
 Germany beats us would be worse than incomplete were I 
 to stop at the enumeration of the various forms of State- 
 aid which the Germans enjoy, and which we lack. Those 
 aids are many and of prime importance, as I have tried to 
 show j but State-aid, howsoever good it may be, is far from 
 being the one thing needed. It is useless for the husband- 
 man to till the soil if his seed be rotten. The commercial 
 harvest will fail in spite of the most careful State husban- 
 dry if the men of commerce themselves are wanting in 
 vigour and intelligence. 
 
 Push 
 It is a little word, but it conveys the meaning of per- 
 haps the biggest part of Germany's success. The German 
 
SELF HELP 157 
 
 has set out to conquer the world of industry. Difficulties 
 which might well have daunted the bravest and the most 
 enthusiastic have beset his path ; but, so far from turning 
 him back, they have apparently but nerved him to re- 
 newed exertion with what results I have shown. Does 
 he lack capital? Then simple living, waiting on thrift, 
 shall bring it to him. Does he lack skill and knowledge 1 
 Then shall hard study and high thinking, companion to 
 simple living, furnish forth his brain. Are there secrets 
 locked up in foreign lands % He will go to foreign lands to 
 win them, and cheerfully endure privation and rebuff in 
 his quest. Is the market already well stocked with the pro- 
 ducts of other nations ? His is the Cheapest Market ; 
 and he forces himself a passage by underselling his rivals, 
 however low their prices. Is he unable to produce an 
 article equal to theirs at equal cost to himself % He makes 
 a colourable imitation, not shrinking sometimes in his 
 enthusiasm from forgery itself. 
 
 Adaptability 
 
 Mere push, however, is not enough. It must be wedded 
 to adaptability ; and this union Germany has consummated. 
 Intelligence, tact, and the determination to please are 
 everywhere conspicuously apparent in the German's 
 business dealings. 
 
 His commercial travellers are better than ours. When 
 they go to a foreign country, they learn its language : a 
 preliminary of commercial intercourse most frequently 
 overlooked by English bagmen. English houses go even 
 farther in the display of insularity. Listen to this : it 
 sounds incredible, but it is from an official despatch of our 
 Consul at Moscow : 
 
 It is useless for British firms to expect to do much good by sending 
 price-lists and circulars to this Consulate printed in English ; much 
 money must be wasted on their publication and postage, and they are 
 not at all appreciated by Russian buyers. 
 
158 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 The German commercial traveller, too, is ubiquitous, and 
 many towns in various parts of the world, where English 
 travellers are unknown, are duly visited by him. 
 Very recently the British Consul-General at Salonica 
 reported to the Foreign Office the neglect by English 
 travellers of this important commercial centre, and con- 
 trasted it with the frequent visits of Germans and others. 
 This is the more remarkable, in view of the fact that 
 England has managed to get a respectable trade at Salonica, 
 though she is hard pressed, and in some directions is losing 
 ground. Unless our English houses bestir themselves, it is 
 safe to prophesy she will lose more. 
 
 And when representatives of English houses do visit 
 foreign towns, they take their provincialism with them, and 
 display it in a most fatal manner. As I have stated more 
 than once, the last thing an English firm usually considers 
 when soliciting orders, is the tastes of its customers. "These 
 are our goods : take them or leave them," is in effect the 
 general message which our emissaries of commerce carry. 
 Germans, on the contrary, are always ready to comply 
 with any hints their patrons may give them as to varia- 
 tions in design and alterations in form or quality. Nor 
 do their agents wait for hints : they try to find out 
 what is wanted, and they instruct their employers 
 accordingly. So orders are plentiful; while the rigid 
 Englishman takes home his bag of samples and an unfilled 
 order-book. 
 
 And neglect of the wishes of foreign customers is not the 
 only manner in which insularity delights to express itself. 
 The English trader refuses to quote in terms of currency 
 and weights and measures other than those of England. 
 Here, too, need it be said 1 he contrasts with the German, and 
 though it is impossible to compute the exact extent of the 
 loss to English trade arising from this cause, it is declared 
 by those in a position to know to be very great. And 
 surely it does not require much acumen to discover that a 
 
SELF HELP 159 
 
 retail merchant, say, in Portugal, is likely to give a heartier 
 welcome to the house which quotes its goods in Portuguese 
 money and measures than to one whose quotations are 
 according to the unknown and the very complicated 
 arithmetic of the British Isles. 
 
 Sir Charles Oppenheimer * has called attention to another 
 disadvantage attending the use of English measure- 
 ments. He quotes as an example the German wool-cloth 
 trade, in which an old practice obtains of measuring 37 
 inches to the yard, resulting in an advantage of 2^ per 
 cent, to the purchaser. The German, however, sells accord- 
 ing to the metric system, of 100 centimetres per metre, and 
 so avoids the over-measurement. Now, calico and printed 
 goods are sold in England in lengths of 48 yards, though 
 the pieces actually contain 51 yards, and the excess is 
 a present to the purchaser. Where competition is keen, 
 and prices are cut, this excess goes far to represent the 
 seller's profit. The German manufacturer knows better. 
 He sells per metre and real lengths, and so is able to make 
 more favourable offers. 
 
 German adaptability crops up at other points. Take 
 the treatment of small orders. The proverb which enjoins 
 a care for the pence, and promises that the pounds will take 
 care of themselves, is an English saw, but the Germans 
 shame the English in their application of it. The big 
 English houses want big orders, and, with starchy dignity 
 and a shortsighted contempt for possible expansions, 
 scorn the small order, leaving it magnanimously to the 
 German houses. They are ready enough to snap up any 
 orders, however small. To be once more proverbial : " A 
 can tie littles maks a muckle," is a Scots saying practised 
 by Germans. Not only so : the small order often leads to the 
 large. A story lately current in the City illustrates the 
 point. An English commercial traveller, returning from 
 South America, was abused by the senior partner of his 
 1 Foreign Office, 1890, Annual Series, No. 1586. 
 
160 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 firm for sending home small orders, and was informed that 
 no great house like theirs could take on the 5 business. 
 The traveller pleaded the German practice. The senior 
 partner consigned the Germans to the devil. Five years 
 after the traveller returned, and heard the senior partner's 
 lamentation over the decay of business. " It's Germans," 
 was his explanation. " The 500 orders have followed the 
 five-pounders." The senior partner suggested that they 
 must take anything they could get. The traveller replied 
 that there was precious little left. " You snubbed me 
 once " (so the hardy drummer punctuated the moral) " for 
 booking small orders, and sent the Germans to the devil. 
 But it is our business which has gone to the devil ; and 
 there you are ! " 
 
 Let me name another point : the Germans pack better. 
 It may seem a small matter to the outsider. Really it is not 
 so. The Ironmonger recently instituted inquiries as to this 
 among other matters affecting our Export Trade, and the 
 English merchants, consulted generally, admitted our in- 
 feriority to the Germans and the Americans. Erom 
 this, and other sources of information, it is clear that the 
 want of method, and the wasteful clumsiness of our own 
 people, combined with their inability to indicate to their 
 foreign customers the total freight cost of a consignment, 
 inclusive of packing and carriage, tells against them in 
 the world-market. This, and similar trade details which 
 I might mention, may perhaps figure small in the eye of 
 the reader of my remarks on such big topics as Protective 
 Tariffs and Technical Education. But I can assure him 
 that these matters of detail to which the Germans pay 
 such sedulous attention, and which Englishmen so often 
 neglect, count substantially in the list of reasons why 
 Germany beats us. 
 
SELF HELP 161 
 
 In General 
 
 I might go on for many pages setting out the superior 
 powers of self-help which the Germans possess, and owing 
 to which they steal our markets. But I think I have 
 indicated in this, or in those earlier chapters dealing with 
 specific industries, the main features. Push and adapt- 
 ability account for most ; but one or two other qualities 
 must be recorded. There is the great principle of 
 Show. It might be imagined that, with our railway 
 stations, our hoardings, our journals, our programmes, 
 our fields and our bathing-machines smeared with ad- 
 vertisements of every ware known to civilisation, English 
 traders can have little to reproach themselves withal on 
 the score of pushing their merchandise into the public 
 gaze. Yet, though the hoarding of bewildering ugliness is 
 unknown in German streets, it is a fact that German manu- 
 facturers have somewhat to teach the English. I have 
 spoken more than once of the curious reluctance to exhibit 
 at international shows which has afflicted English manu- 
 facturers of late. They say that, by taking part in 
 these exhibitions, they do but provide the foreigner with the 
 opportunity for displaying his imitative skill. This argu- 
 ment is merely fallacious. The Germans are always well to 
 the front at such exhibitions, and their trade is growing, 
 their success, indeed, being ascribed by themselves in no 
 small measure to this very fact. Englishmen should explain 
 how they expect to sell their wares at all except by bring- 
 ing them before the public. They should, to be consistent, 
 refrain from advertising altogether. 
 
 At the same time English manufacturers are not entirely 
 foolish in their dread of this faculty of imitativeness, 
 which the German possesses in a remarkable degree. 
 Indeed, a list of the factors in German success would be 
 lacking in an important item were it omitted. Seeing how 
 many inventions have England for birthplace, it is obvious 
 
 M 
 
162 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 that the present proportions of German industry can only 
 have been attained by a careful imitation of those inven- 
 tions. It was thus the Germans got their start. They have 
 come, and they still come, to England in large numbers for 
 the very purpose ; and, whenever they have deemed it ex- 
 pedient, they have engaged English managers and artisans 
 to go to Germany, and work in the factories there. But it 
 is significant that the German inventive genius, which in 
 the past was somewhat backward, is now developing at a 
 rate which bids fair soon, to place the German beyond the 
 need of English models. One special cause of complaint 
 against him is that his imitations are inferior to the 
 models, though (apart from fraud) his copy is often 
 sufficiently like the British original to deceive the pur- 
 chaser, and where it is of cheaper workmanship, and can 
 therefore be sold at a lower price, the English maker is 
 heavily handicapped. But it must not be forgotten that 
 the German imitation is not as a rule inferior in all 
 respects. In the matter of artistic finish it is often one 
 may say, as a rule decidedly better. In many kinds of 
 manufacture such superiority is vital : in most it is an 
 integral factor. So artistry must be added to the list 
 of those accomplishments which tell. 
 
 So, too, must the greater steadiness of the German 
 worker. Ask your tailor whether he would rather employ 
 an Englishman or a German 1 and why 1 His answer will 
 be conclusive. In that view, however, it is a matter 
 concerning the English workmen only, and so beside my 
 present inquiry. But the greater steadiness of the 
 German is also effective in another way, which is per- 
 tinent to my purpose : the cost of running a factory is 
 less when the men are regular. Engines have to be 
 tended and fed, and the wear and tear of machinery 
 goes on, whether sixty men or six hundred turn up on 
 Monday morning. Of the fact that work in German 
 factories does progress more steadily than in English 
 
SELF HELP 163 
 
 there is no doubt whatever in the minds of those who 
 have made observations in both countries. 
 
 Lastly, let me reiterate that the great cause of German 
 success is an alert progressiveness, contrasting brilliantly, 
 with the conservative stupor of ourselves. It is all very 
 well to run an old-established business; but you must 
 diligently and continuously be striving to bring its methods 
 up to date. And this is what English manufacturers 
 fail to recognise. There are plenty of exceptions, of 
 course chiefly amongst houses which have their reputa- 
 tions to make, though here and there are firms of estab- 
 lished repute with men of foresight ready to break with 
 orthodox tradition whenever they can find a better way. 
 But the mass of English manufacturers and traders clings 
 to the faith of its fathers ; still thinks " We have never 
 done so " a model sentence in commercial correspondence ; 
 still believes that what was good enough of old is good 
 enough yet ; ignores the constant change of condition, 
 which renders the nature and wants of the market as 
 variable as the weather. German houses reflect the exact 
 opposite of this attitude. They are all for progress and the 
 eager and intelligent study of changing fashions and 
 changing needs. They are ready at all times to make a 
 new departure, if thereby they may save but a single small 
 market. 
 
 These are the reasons why Germany beats us. The list 
 has been a long one ; yet I could not well have made it 
 shorter, without leaving out items any one of which is 
 capable of accounting for much of England's failure. 
 
 m '1 
 
VIII 
 
 What we Must Do to be Saved 
 
 Is, shortly, the opposite of what we are doing now. 
 This final chapter may therefore be brief. As matter of 
 fact and dismal reflection, much of the harm wrought is 
 irreparable : the German Industrial State is a fact, and 
 there is no human probability of its being crushed. 
 Much, too, may for the present be set down as almost 
 irreparable, for the remedy could only come by revo- 
 lution in the English State or in the English mind 
 and habit. But much else is remediable some of it easily 
 remediable. 
 
 Fair Trade 
 
 This is one of the revolutionary changes, the most 
 revolutionary indeed of all, and, in the present state of 
 general opinion, one almost shrinks from reference to 
 it. Yet there is now visible in the public mind a move- 
 ment which makes discussion less appalling than it was. 
 And in any case, as the question must be faced, it is 
 well to give it a foremost place. 
 
 A consideration of the facts forces the conviction that 
 England's Free Trade policy, existing side by side with 
 
FAIR TRADE 165 
 
 Protection in Germany, has been responsible in no small 
 degree for the strides which Germany has made at 
 England's expense. What then % Our fiscal policy requires 
 to be reviewed if not recast. The conclusion is inevit- 
 able. 
 
 It is a bold saying, I know, and one which will make me 
 many enemies. It is a view, too, which, with an English- 
 man's hereditary Free-Trade instinct, I have struggled 
 against. But the struggle has availed me nothing. Those 
 of my critics who, when the earlier portions of this book 
 were appearing in serial form, assailed my work as being 
 a piece of Protectionist Agitation (notwithstanding my 
 disclaimer at starting) have misunderstood my position. 
 My object, as I stated, was to make a diagnosis in 
 a scientific spirit, and from that diagnosis to arrive at 
 such remedies as might be. Most reluctantly have I 
 been convinced that one cause of the disease afflicting 
 the Industrial Body Politic is the pursuit of a Free 
 Trade which is no Free Trade at all. Cobden antici- 
 pated that the cheapening of food resulting from 
 the abolition of the Corn Laws would encourage English 
 manufacture by diminishing the cost of living to the 
 English worker. Free Trade, it was admitted, might 
 hurt English agriculture ; but, it was maintained, it could 
 not but be of great service to English manufacture. How 
 the alternative has been realised will be patent to 
 those who have followed my statement of the under-selling 
 of English goods both in England and abroad. 
 
 Let us face the position. England is being flooded with 
 foreign manufactures, which come here duty free, and 
 which are sold at a price made artificially low by the 
 Protective Tariffs of other Governments. Under these 
 Tariffs English goods have their cost raised in their passage 
 through foreign ports, and in neutral markets also they are 
 at a disadvantage with the goods of foreign rivals, whose 
 
166 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 Protected home-markets permit reductions on Export 
 
 Prices, which under normal conditions would be quite 
 
 unremunerative. 
 
 Are we then to adopt an autonomous Protective Tariff 1 
 
 By no means : the time has gone by for that ; just as surely 
 as it has not yet come for the inauguration of complete Free 
 Trade. A middle course is possible, and it is that 
 middle course which I am here advocating, at whatever 
 cost to popularity. Germany herself, under the Caprivi 
 Administration, is a good illustration of it in practice. 
 The motto is simply quid pro quo. To the extent to 
 which a foreign country shuts out our goods from her 
 ,. markets, to that extent should we penalise her goods 
 in our markets. 1 
 Then, we must federate the Empire, in the most practical 
 % way the way of commerce. At present we are losing 
 our grip of our own colonies and dependencies, which 
 are steadily falling into the hands of the German. 
 German goods enter India and Canada and Australia 
 and the Cape on equal terms with English goods; 
 both pay duties, German no more than English. 
 Surely this can be rectified ? The existing treaties 
 between England and Belgium and Germany must be got 
 rid of Lord Salisbury has said they should never have 
 been entered into and our colonies must learn to be 
 filial. "We protect them with our Flag ; our gigantic Navy 
 v is largely for the purpose of safe-guarding them. But we 
 pay all the cost ; they, in return think they have done 
 
 1 A critic in the Bradford Observer, suspecting me of Protectionism, 
 advances a reason against Protection which is curious enough to 
 repeat. He says that I "ought surely to learn that the decline of 
 our export of manufactured goods to Continental nations is entirely 
 due to their Protectionist tariffs." A strange argument, truly ! 
 Because other nations succeed in keeping out our goods by Protective 
 Tariffs, therefore we ought not to adopt a like method for keeping out 
 theirs ! There is something missing from the Sequitur here. 
 
SUBSIDISED TRANSPORT 167 
 
 their duty by the mother-country, when they have sung 
 the National Anthem at their banquets. They must 
 discriminate in their Tariffs, and admit English products 
 on more favourable terms than those of other nations. 
 We might in return discriminate between their produce 
 and foreign produce entering England : Canadian and 
 Australian Wheat, for example, might come free ; Wheat 
 from the United States and Germany and Russia being 
 penalised with a ten per cent. Tariff. So we might become 
 a great Industrial Empire. 
 
 Of course the carrying out of the reform would 
 not be unattended by difficulties, but they are not 
 insuperable ; while the benefits would be immense. 
 
 A year or two ago such a suggestion would have been 
 classed with Utopian dreams. Fair-Traders were commonly 
 laughed at ; to-day Fair Trade in the form of Commer- 
 cial Federation is within the range of practical politics. 
 
 Subsidised Transport 
 
 This is an exceedingly difficult question. German 
 success is in part due to the low transport charges paid on 
 German merchandise ; that lowness is the result of the 
 State subsidy system which prevails in Germany. Shall 
 we follow suit] To do so would be to take on a form 
 of Protection : though that consideration should not in 
 itself be fatal to the proposal. The question to decide 
 is, Would the British tax-payer consent to pay the 
 piper 1 The payment would have to be a heavy one ; for 
 the discrepancy between English and Continental railway 
 rates is big, especially on goods destined for export, and 
 equalisation would be a costly business. The thing is 
 feasible, of course, and its benefits to English manufac- 
 ture would be undoubted and great. Moreover, it is almost 
 
168 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 the only way of effecting any large reduction in English 
 railway rates, and it will be hard work to screw much 
 more out of the companies. But it is a form of 
 Protection which no Government would venture on with a 
 light heart. Yet ours would have a certain sort of precedent 
 for granting this aid if it were so minded : the Treasury 
 is offering a million sterling to help light railways and 
 agriculture, and the principle is much the same in the 
 case of ordinary railways and manufacture. But there 
 is another method of checkmating our rival. The 
 English Government once proposed to tax bounty-fed 
 German sugar to the extent of the bounty. All German 
 manufactures carried at specially low export rates on 
 German State lines should be penalised at English 
 ports to the extent of the bounty. It would be a most 
 excellent reform ; and it would be most welcome. The 
 German Government, for example, would soon tire of 
 letting Silesian coal-owners send their coal at ruinously 
 low rates to Baltic ports for shipment to England, 
 when it found that England calculated the amount it gave, 
 and added an equal sum to the cost of the coal on landing 
 in England. 
 
 Commercial Consuls 
 
 Under this heading in the previous chapter I called 
 attention to the greater usefulness of the German Consular 
 Service. Here, at any rate, we are outside the region of 
 controversy, and no one can refuse to follow me on the 
 plea that I am leading him astray from the sacred 
 principles in which he has been reared. There are no 
 drawbacks to the institution of improvements here, nor 
 is the path of reform beset with difficulties. Our com- 
 mercial attaches must be increased in number. Three for 
 the whole of Europe is a mere absurdity. Every 
 Legation should have one as a matter of course. And 
 
TECHNICAL EDUCATION 169 
 
 our Consular System must be overhauled. There must 
 be no poorly paid Vice-Consuls at industrial centres. 
 Properly and well-trained men must represent our 
 commerce in all important towns throughout the world, 
 and they must be remunerated on a fit and proper scale. 
 They should regard it as their chief business, the pushing 
 of English trade, and the assisting of English traders, 
 both personally and by the collection and dissemination of 
 knowledge as to changing fashions and wants and 
 conditions of market. The Consular Bureau should be 
 a commercial barometer for the use of English manufac- 
 turers and merchants. 
 
 Here is one useful remedy which may be applied immedi- 
 ately j without raising any controversy ; without treading 
 on any corns ; without very much trouble to State Depart- 
 ments concerned ; without much expense, relatively to the 
 sums which the State spends in other directions ; but with 
 the certainty of doing something probably something 
 substantial towards checking the ebb of our commercial 
 prosperity. 
 
 Technical Education 
 
 We must give our people a sound practical and 
 theoretical acquaintance with the industries in which 
 they are to work. There are who place the lack of 
 Technical Education in England in the forefront of her 
 failure, and they are men whose opinion is worth heeding. 
 I endeavoured in the previous chapter to give an idea 
 of the way the German educates. We must take example 
 by him. We have already Technical Education of a kind 
 in England, and Mr. Ritchie estimates that we spend four 
 millions a year upon it ; but it is insignificant and half- 
 hearted. The Technical Instruction Act of 1889, giving 
 local authorities power to supply, or aid in the supply of, 
 
170 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 technical instruction, is a move in the right direction ; 
 the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act, 1890, 
 under which a sum, amounting in one year ('94-5) to 
 '744,000, is given to English County Councils and County 
 Boroughs for technical education, is another : though some 
 of these local bodies, to their shame, diverted 144,000 
 of this sum to the relief of their rates last year. But 
 more, very much more, needs to be done. It is no use to 
 boggle at the expense. You grumble at your children's 
 school bills : but you pay them, knowing the schools to be 
 necessary ; and you must pay the national bill, for the 
 nation's education is also necessary. See to it that the 
 money is rightly expended ; but make up your minds to 
 spend it. We increase our naval armaments to keep pace 
 with the development of foreign powers ; it is just as wise 
 and necessary a policy to increase our educational arma- 
 ments, so that our industrial army shall not fall below the 
 standard of Germany's. As a fact, it has fallen very far 
 below. We have now to make up lee-way, and the best 
 endeavours of statesmen and educational experts should be 
 devoted to the task. There is none more pressing. 
 
 The advocacy of this policy needs no further argument ; 
 but in case that among my readers there remain any yet 
 unconvinced any who, in spite of the lesson spread out 
 before them, still rely on the position that England got 
 on very well in the past without technical schools let 
 me remind these unbelievers- that the conditions of to-day 
 are entirely changed. We got our supremacy from a 
 number of political and other causes, which I alluded 
 to in my first chapter. Those causes no longer operate. 
 We have now to defend our position against the most 
 determined and the best equipped foes ; and for this war- 
 fare the best possible training is needed. 
 
 This is not the place for a detailed discussion of the 
 improvements and new departures which we require ; but 
 
TECHNICAL EDUCATION 171 
 
 there is one suggestion I desire to put forward. The 
 Technical Instruction Act provides for instruction in the 
 principles of science and art applicable to industries, and 
 in the application of special branches of science and art to 
 specific industries ; but it forbids teaching the practice of an 
 industry. This is wrong. The one ought to be done, but 
 the other ought not to be left undone. The apprentice- 
 ship system is disappearing, and practical instruction in an 
 industry must be provided. The actual trade must be 
 taught. Here and there, it is true, despite the Act, actual 
 trades are being taught, and with the money provided by 
 the Act. For example, at Luton instruction under the Act 
 is now being given in the practice of the local straw 
 plaiting industry, which had got into a moribund condition ; 
 the effects so far have been most satisfactory, and are 
 reviving the trade. In other words, the Act attempts to 
 draw a distinction, which would be foolish if it could 
 be put into practice, and though in several towns it is 
 wisely ignored, it is objectionable, and should be got rid of. 
 Let me make one other suggestion. Why cannot Tech- 
 nical Instruction be commenced in Board Schools % There 
 seems no convincing reason why Elementary Education 
 should be merely literary ; while there seems every reason 
 why it should be combined with healthy and interesting 
 training in manual industry and artistic craftmanship. 
 The time-limit blocks the way at present to much reform ; 
 and the age at which children of the poorer classes are 
 taken away from school should be raised. But in the mean- 
 time many hours might be saved by compressing the less 
 necessary parts of the school curriculum. Learning the 
 names of Canaanitish chiefs and the like gymnastics of 
 the mind might with advantage make room for elementary 
 instruction in some useful or beautiful craft. 
 
172 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 Individual Enteiyyrise 
 
 But let me again reiterate that help from the State is 
 not enough. Fair Trade, Commercial Consuls, Technical 
 Colleges good and necessary as they are will not avail 
 to stem the inroad of the German, unless our manufac- 
 turers and merchants brace themselves for exertions more 
 strenuous and better directed, and a more forward and 
 spirited policy generally, than have been the rule with 
 them for many years. 
 
 They must be more studious of the tastes and wishes 
 of their customers. Evidence on this head is accumu- 
 lating daily ; scarce a British Consul's report but empha- 
 sises the paramount need of English manufacturers 
 paying more regard to the desires of those with whom they 
 do, or would do, business. 
 
 They must send out travellers who know the language 
 of the country which they are to canvass. 
 
 They must cease to scorn the small order. Witnesses 
 to the folly of contemning orders derisively described by 
 English houses as " mere retail business " are numerous. 
 The manufacturers usually awake to the fatal results which 
 follow this policy of pinchbeck magnificence when the trade 
 has gone. 
 
 They must pay more heed to the merits of careful 
 packing, and the like details of well-conducted com- 
 merce. 
 
 Yet more important: They must have an up-to-date 
 equipment in their workshops. Much of the disaster 
 which has overtaken our Iron and Steel Trades is at- 
 tributed to the better machinery of the Continental iron- 
 masters. Much of the havoc wrought in our Chemical 
 trades is due to parsimony in equipment. 
 
 They must adopt the Metric System of Weights and 
 
INDIVIDUAL ENTERPRISE 173 
 
 Measures, for their Export Business at any rate. It is 
 difficult to refer to this subject without exhibiting im- 
 patience. Statesmen approve the reform in their speeches ; 
 Chambers of Commerce resolve that it is a necessity; 
 the Decimal System forms part of the Board School reper- 
 tory : no one has a word to say against its adoption. 
 Yet our traders persist knowing it to be to their own 
 hurt in the antiquated and clumsy table of Weights and 
 Measures used by our forefathers before international 
 commerce was born. Also, whatever the system of money 
 and measures in vogue in a country in which Englishmen 
 purpose to trade, they must conform to that system, or be 
 prepared to see the puzzled native transfer his orders to 
 the accommodating German. 
 
 They must be more artistic. It is well enough it is 
 very well to be thorough and substantial, but articles 
 for sale must take the eye of the purchaser, and English 
 goods are very often inferior to German in this respect. 
 The defect must be remedied : it is hard to believe that 
 elegance is beyond the reach of English designers and 
 craftsmen. If our people will only recognise the import- 
 ance of graceful form, pleasing design, and artistic finish, 
 and cultivate the necessary skill, they can repair the 
 deficiency, in a great measure. Any way, the experiment 
 is worth trying. Arts and Crafts Exhibitions should not 
 be regarded as the property of Mr. John Burns's "aesthetic 
 dawdlers." 
 
 They must practise the Imitative Art. Englishmen 
 have done this in the past witness the foreign names of 
 many English manufactures : " holland," to take one ex- 
 ample : which indicate an originally foreign industry 
 captured by our own people. But the Germans have shown 
 themselves even better and more thorough masters of the 
 art, as Englishmen know to their cost. Englishmen must 
 practise it more sedulously. 
 
174 MADE IN GERMANY 
 
 They must advertise more boldly. The fear of exhi- 
 bitions is a craven fear, and must be overcome. Just now, 
 particularly, when English goods are being supplanted by 
 German, our manufacturers, when their manufactures are 
 worthy of praise, should take advantage of any chance that 
 may offer of putting them before the public side by side 
 with the German equivalent. Foreigners who want to 
 imitate English wares can secure the necessary specimens ; 
 they are not confined to looking at them through a glass 
 case. 
 
 Labour Troubles must be avoided. English manufac- 
 turers should recognise that it is necessary for their 
 servants to enjoy decent conditions of life. Well paid 
 workers other things being equal are the best workers, 
 and a raising of wages or a shortening of hours is often a 
 profitable investment. It is poor policy on the part of the 
 masters to risk or throw away trade for the sake of a few 
 pence. And the men on their part should be careful how 
 they foster disputes ; the rules of a trade-union should not 
 be rigid in non-essentials, but should emulate the elasticity 
 of the market and the changing conditions of industry. 
 Trade-unionism is a beneficent power, when it is wielded 
 with discretion. One often observes signs of a lack in 
 this regard. 
 
 Lastly, Englishmen must be more progressive. They 
 must not rest on their reputation ; they must be ever alert 
 and watchful, ready to take instant and full advantage of 
 new discoveries, ready to accommodate themselves to the 
 continual changes in the wants of the peoples of all nations. 
 Let the fate of the Dyeing Trade serve for a common 
 warning. 
 
 Are these counsels of perfection 1 They are counsels, 
 nevertheless, which are, every one of them, necessary to 
 salvation. Every one of them is followed in Germany, and 
 
INDIVIDUAL ENTERPRISE 175 
 
 I decline to believe that England's industrial character has 
 so deteriorated that she is unable, an she will, to pull 
 herself up to the German standard of conduct. Her 
 unique position as unchallenged mistress of the Industrial 
 World is gone, and is not likely to be regained. But some 
 of the departed glory may yet be restored to her. At least 
 let us see to it that she fares no worse. 
 
 THE END 
 
 RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNOAY. 
 
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